Nine years after armed men bundled him into an unmarked car two weeks after his own wedding, Jagtar Singh Johal walked out of New Delhi's Tihar Prison on Thursday a free man — on bail, stripped of his passport, and legally barred from speaking to reporters about the ordeal that defined nearly a decade of his life.

Johal, 39, from Dumbarton, Scotland, was seized by Indian police in Punjab in November 2017 and accused of bankrolling and supplying weapons to the banned Khalistan Liberation Force, which India blames for a string of targeted killings. He has never been convicted in any of the roughly eight federal cases brought against him, some of which carry the death penalty, and was fully acquitted in one case after years of proceedings, according to UPI's report on his release.

The Delhi High Court first ordered Johal freed on September 18, but authorities missed that deadline. It took a second order on Thursday — giving officials a strict three-hour window to comply — before prison gates finally opened, according to coverage from The Star.

A gag order and a surrendered passport

Johal's bail is not unconditional. He must hand over his passport, cannot leave India, and is forbidden from discussing his own case with journalists — a restriction his supporters call punitive given he was never found guilty of anything. He must also avoid any social media group where what courts termed "anti-national" material circulates.

His brother, Gurpreet Singh Johal, who has spent nine years lobbying British officials on his behalf, said the moment barely felt real.

"There have been so many setbacks and disappointments in the last nine years that I didn't dare to believe it until I saw Jagtar walking out of the prison gates."

Rights groups that have tracked the case for years were blunter about what it represents. Reprieve, the UK legal charity that campaigned for his release, noted Johal had been living under the shadow of a possible death sentence throughout, while Redress, another human rights organisation, argued the sheer length of uncertainty amounted to a form of psychological harm in itself. A United Nations working group concluded back in 2022 that Johal's detention was arbitrary under international law, a finding India has not accepted.

Johal has long alleged he was tortured into an early confession by Punjab police, a claim Indian authorities deny. The UK government, for its part, has faced its own accusations — including in ongoing British court proceedings — that intelligence it shared with India contributed to his arrest; London has said those allegations are "not admitted" while litigation continues.

For now, Johal remains in India, his passport confiscated and his case against him formally still open even as he breathes free air for the first time since 2017. His family says the fight to clear his name — and bring him home to Scotland — is not over.