Wife of Briton detained in India speaks of fears for his health

The wife of a British man arrested over extremism claims at an Indian airport at the end of a family holiday has spoken of her fears for his health. Heiba Khanum, 44, said she had been reassured initially by officers that she would be swiftly be reunited with her husband, who has a heart condition, but that he had since spent more than seven months in a prison cell. Aziz Ahmed, a British national and father of three who was born in India, was arrested on 30 August at Bengaluru airport after a six-week holiday with his wife and their teenage children. According to India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA), Ahmed was under investigation over allegations that he had been recruiting young people to attend sermons inspired by Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group proscribed in the UK and defined as a terrorist organisation by the Indian state in October. Ahmed, 48, who lives with his family in Waldshut-Tiengen, a German town near the Swiss border, denies the allegations. His wife described the NIA’s claims as “nonsense”. “As a wife, I can say he’s not the type at all,” she said. “He may just be an engineer by certification, but he is literally a teacher on the go, and he’s a student for life. “He’s always had this never-ending thirst for knowledge. He’s still learning about all the plants that are there in the prison; he’s found a person who can teach him about the scientific names of those plants. “That’s that’s how he is, even with the kids. In fact, when we were on the way to the airport, he was just talking to the kids about relative velocity. Little did I know that the quicker we were heading to the airport, the quicker we were losing him.” Khanum said their 16-year-old son asked her every day when what she had done to get his father home. “He’s just trying to find out when his dad is coming back,” she said. “How do I tell him that I’m trying?” Khanum said her husband, who is a freelance business consultant, had suffered from a serious heart complaint for which he had surgery in 2023 but that the operation had left him with reduced lung capacity. Their summer visit to see family in Bengaluru had been an opportunity to skip the waiting list at home and seek medical treatment, she added. “Since the time he’s been in prison, his palpitations have started again,” she said. “The same problem he had the surgery for has restarted. “It is scary, because there have been times when I have literally had to keep my hand in front of his nose just to see his breathing. There have been months I haven’t slept because of how serious this could get.” She added that she struggled to cope with the thought that her husband’s case might emulate that of the British Sikh activist Jagtar Singh Johal, who has been detained in an Indian jail for seven years despite being acquitted of all the charges against him. She said: “I just want this nightmare to end. I thought that we would lose him to Covid. My son used to have blackouts, thinking that he’s going to lose his father due to his health. Little did we know that we have he has been taken away from us by other means.” The NIA arrested six other alleged members of Hizb ut-Tahrir in May. Ahmed is accused of conspiring with them to hold secret sermons with the intention of establishing an Islamic caliphate in India. Khanum said the authorities had refused requests for Ahmed to receive private medical treatment and that he had been without his prescribed inhaler for “almost a month”. Ahmed was alone when he was arrested as he had decided to leave the family holiday two days early in order to make a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. “It is something that we feel has a healing effect,” she said. Indian media reports have suggested that Ahmed was charged last month. His wife said she had not seen any paperwork and that their lawyers would be petitioning for his release at a bail hearing on 16 April. She said he had also been encouraged to sign documents that he had not read and that he was left at one stage in the same room as two tuberculosis patients while receiving treatment in hospital during a brief time away from his cell. A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said: “We are supporting a British national detained in India and are in contact with the local authorities.” The Indian high commission has been approached for comment.