{"id":395,"date":"2004-10-10T15:08:11","date_gmt":"2004-10-10T19:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/2004\/10\/10\/sikh-victim-of-wrongful-imprisonment"},"modified":"2004-10-10T15:08:11","modified_gmt":"2004-10-10T19:08:11","slug":"sikh-victim-of-wrongful-imprisonment-in-india-returns-to-his-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/2004\/10\/10\/sikh-victim-of-wrongful-imprisonment-in-india-returns-to-his-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Sikh Victim of Wrongful Imprisonment in India Returns to His Family in the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a315'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><P><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\">After five years of illegal detention and false charges brought by the Indian government, a Sikh has returned to the UK and been <A href=\"http:\/\/www.tribuneindia.com\/2004\/20041010\/punjab1.htm#3\">reunited<\/A><\/FONT><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\"> with his <A href=\"http:\/\/www.tribuneindia.com\/2004\/20041010\/pb3.jpg\">family<\/A><\/FONT><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\">.<\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\"><EM>During a visit to India in June 1999, Balbir S. Bains was wrongfully imprisoned by the Indian government on charges of terrorism.&nbsp; During his imprisonment, he was subjected to physical and mental torture:<\/EM><\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\"><EM>After three years in jail without a conviction, he was subsequently found innocent of all charges, which were declared improper and unjust by Delhi&#x2019;s Special Court. Whilst exonerating him, Special Judge, M.L. Sahni said in his final judgement: <BR>&nbsp;<BR>&#x201C;A balloon of falsehoods&#x2026;the prosecution story stands falsified&#x2026;It is well said that a lie does not have legs to stand on&#x2026;Accordingly, I acquit the accused of the charges framed against him.&#x201D; <BR>&nbsp;<BR>Says Mr Harinder Singh: &#x201C;It was even more shocking when shortly afterwards, an internal investigation conducted by the Intelligence Bureau (I.B) proved that the RDX explosives allegedly &#x2018;found&#x2019; on Balbir&#x2019;s person were, in fact, from an operation unit of the police.&#x201D; <BR>&nbsp;<BR>After his acquittal in May 2002 Mr Balbir Bains expected to be immediately reunited with his long-suffering family. However, to his horror, he discovered that he was yet to face another two years of heart-wrenching separation from his wife and five children. Since the UK Home Office continued to consider him a threat to national security.<\/EM><\/FONT><\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\">Bains&#x2019; lawyer fought the denial of a returning resident visa, and the Home Secretary eventually withdrew the case against Bains.&nbsp; <BR><\/P><\/FONT><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After five years of illegal detention and false charges brought by the Indian government, a Sikh has returned to the UK and been reunited with his family. During a visit to India in June 1999, Balbir S. Bains was wrongfully imprisoned by the Indian government on charges of terrorism.&nbsp; During his imprisonment, he was subjected [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1471],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punjab"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}