On Wednesday, 22 September, the Crown's Prosecution Service dropped charges and freed the three United Kingdom (UK) Sikhs who were arrested for allegedly killing a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in December 2020. This came after a hearing to extradite the three men to India had just begun.
Supporting the three men, many people gathered outside Westminster Magistrate’s Court and others on social media expressed unhappiness towards the government.
“While the State of India claimed their involvement in the killing of RSS worker Rulda Singh in 2009 and has asked for their extradition and a subsequent trial in Indian courts, Sikhs across the UK protested the trial and the Boris Johnson government's compliance with Indian authorities,” The Quint reported.
#WestMidlands3 had become a Twitter movement.
The three men aged - 37, 38, and 40 are British nationals, had been detained by the local police under suspicions of being part of the murder conspiracy against the RSS member. The trial was to determine if there was any reason to extradite them to India.
One of the three accused was detained in 2010 by the West Midlands Police in connection to the same case and in 2015, a court in Patiala proclaimed him an offender in the case. An NIA probe also linked him to the targeted killings across Punjab in 2016-17, including the murder of another RSS leader – Brigadier Jagdish Gagneja (Retd) – the Indian Express reported.
However, this is not an end in itself. The Sikh community is also seeking the freedom of another Scottish Sikh – Jagtar Singh Johal.
"He (Johal) has been held without conviction for three years and has claimed to be tortured to sign the confession," the BBC reported.
In a press statement, Sikh Federation UK sharing court solicitor Gareth Pierce’s observations wrote, “She expressed some disappointment that the case had finished without the defence being able to present its evidence. Had it been heard it would have provided a convincing history of the behaviour of Indian police towards Sikhs and highlighted how India’s draconian and repressive laws are used to target the Sikh minority.”
The UK courts have, in the past, conducted trials for the extradition of Sikh suspects to India; the most recent being in February 2021, when the court found no reason to support the extradition of a 44-year-old alleged to be a member of the Khalistan Zindabad Force, Baaz News reported.
Bhai Amrik Singh, the Chair of the Sikh Federation (UK) said: “We have maintained all along that Priti Patel started extradition proceedings to simply appease the right-wing Indian government that she enthusiastically supports.
“When the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab visited India in December 2020 to discuss a trade deal it was too much of a coincidence that Priti Patel disgracefully sanctioned the extradition process and ordered the arrests the next day.
“This was an entirely politically motivated course of action for which Priti Patel must be held to account. She certified the extradition request and ordered the arrest of the three British Sikhs without any new evidence that would stand up in a British court.
“Priti Patel should resign for failing to follow due process and doing India’s dirty business of trying to silence British Sikhs.
“She has wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money to play roughshod with the lives of three innocent British Sikh men, their wives and children in a shocking ordeal over the last nine months and held the Sikh community to ransom.”
Preet Kaur Gill MP also wrote on her Twitter: “Following the collapse of the case against the #WestMidlands3, I've written to the Home Secretary demanding answers to my concerns that an extradition request has been certified despite multiple previous investigations and no credible new evidence.”
