Delhi High Court grants Jagtar Singh Johal bail in seven UAPA cases after nine years

The Delhi High Court on 18 September granted bail to British national Jagtar Singh Johal in seven cases under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. A bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Ravinder Dudeja said he has spent more than eight years in custody and that, even after the Supreme Court told the trial court to move faster, the cases are not close to a verdict.

Johal, 38 or 39 depending on the filing, was arrested in Punjab in November 2017 while visiting India from Dumbarton in Scotland. The National Investigation Agency treats him as an alleged financier and courier for the Khalistan Liberation Force, not as a shooter. The seven files before the High Court cover targeted killings and attempted murders in Ludhiana and Jalandhar in 2016 and 2017, including the murder of Amit Sharma, president of Shri Hindu Takhat in Ludhiana, and the attempted murder of Jagdish Kumar Gagneja, then an RSS office-bearer in Punjab.

Why the bench moved

The trial court had rejected five bail pleas on 7 September 2022 and two more on 25 April 2024. A coordinate High Court bench dismissed his appeals on 18 September 2024, holding that the allegations were prima facie true. On 15 July 2026 the Supreme Court sent the whole set back for a fresh look. That is the remand the Chawla-Dudeja bench was deciding.

The judges said delay itself now weighed against continued detention. They also said a foreign passport cannot, by itself, keep a man locked up when the prosecution has not been able to finish its evidence. They did treat flight risk as real. The order requires a personal bond of Rs 5 lakh with two sureties of the same amount, surrender of the passport to the trial court, a full list of addresses and phone numbers to the investigating officer, and a fortnightly appearance before that officer.

Johal is barred from joining WhatsApp groups or other platforms that circulate what the court called anti-national material, and from posting such material himself. He must give an undertaking to that effect before the trial court and must not approach witnesses.

What the NIA still says

Investigators allege that Johal carried 3,000 euros from a UK-based KLF associate, Gursharan Singh, to Harminder Singh, known as Mintoo, in Paris. They call that transfer part of a transnational conspiracy to create disorder in Punjab. Johal has denied the charges. His family and the campaign group Free Jagtar say the case rests on witnesses who later withdrew statements. In March 2025 the Moga district court acquitted him in a separate file that accused him of financing the KLF. After that acquittal he was held in near-solitary conditions in Tihar, according to the legal charity REDRESS.

He was already on bail in at least one of the nine matters originally opened against him. Friday's order covers the seven that were still keeping him inside. As of 18 September he had not yet walked out. His brother Gurpreet Singh said the family expected release in the coming days once the bond and sureties are arranged.

London and the UN file

British MPs have raised the detention for years. In April 2026 ten UN human rights mandate-holders wrote to New Delhi and described the length of pre-trial custody as a form of psychological torture. India has not accepted that description. The NIA still wants the trials to run. The High Court did not quash the charges. It said a man cannot be held indefinitely while those trials stall.

The next practical questions are mechanical. Sureties have to be accepted. The passport has to reach the trial court. The investigating officer has to log the first fortnightly attendance. None of that decides whether the KLF conspiracy case is true. It does decide that, after nine years without a conviction in these seven files, the default is no longer a cell in Tihar.