THE sister of a man whose wrongful arrest led to a four -year Indian nightmare has issued an impassioned plea to Boris Johnson.

John Armstrong was one of six Britons - nicknamed the Chennai6 - and 35 men in total who were arrested on board the Seaman Guard Ohio ship off the Indian coast in October 2013.

His sister Joanne Thomlinson has now backed a petition launched by the families of Britons caught up in international prison cases, which urges Prime Minister Boris Johnson to introduce a new law to protect British citizens abroad.

John, a former Paratrooper from Wigton, was working as an armed anti-piracy security guard. His family - led by Joanne - initially believed the misunderstanding would be quickly cleared up.

However, time in prison, followed by the quashing of charges led to the men spending months in India as free men. However, the Indian police had their passports and refused to return them, leaving the Britons stranded.

Eventually the quash was overturned and the men were tried and convicted of illegally possessing firearms in international waters, and sentenced to five years’ hard labour.

That conviction was eventually overturned in November 2017 and the men were formally allowed to leave the country.

Joanne, 34, joined forces with relatives of the other Chennai6 to lobby Government - including then Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson - to do more to help the men, but believes it was only public pressure which eventually made a difference.

“This campaign relates to a problem that we had to live through for more than four years, which was not being fully supported by our Government during John’s detention in India.

“It’s a campaign therefore that is close to our hearts,” she told The Cumberland News. “A campaign like this shouldn’t really be needed, but unfortunately it very much is.

“We found the Government exercises significant discretion in whether they help someone in trouble overseas and in how they help them.

“In our case it wasn’t until we started to speak out and campaign publicly for John’s release that the Government stepped up their efforts due to public pressure.

“This shouldn’t be the case. It should be a right of every British citizen to have their rights protected and defended, no matter where they are in the world.

“That is what this campaign aims to have enshrined in law.”

Leading the campaign is Yvonne Irving, the now wife of fellow Chennai6 ex-soldier Billy Irving; Richard Ratcliffe, husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe imprisoned in Iran; Daniela Tejada-Venegas, wife of Matthew Hedges who had been imprisoned in Dubai; Yemisrach Hailemariam, wife of Andargachew (Andy) Tsege, who spent four years on death row in Ethiopia; and Gurpreet Singh Johal, brother of Jagtar (Jaggi) Singh Johal, a British Sikh activist currently in prison in India.

Joanne, a mum-of-two also from Wigton, continued: “Boris Johnson was foreign secretary so he should be aware, more than most, of the thousands of cases involving Britons abroad.

“I would hope this would therefore make this campaign something that would resonate with him.

“However, I do think that it will again fall down to public pressure to get a law passed, which is why having 175,000 signatures within the first 24 hours of the petition being launched is an amazing achievement and will help to pave the way to success for this campaign.”

Asked what difference such a law could have made to John, now living back in his hometown, she is convinced it would.

“The aim of this law is to protect the rights of British citizens abroad, so having this law in place would have made a difference to John and to us.

“Would it have affected the time he was in detention? We will never know.

“But it would have made the process so much easier to deal with if we had felt we had the full support of the Government and hadn’t had to constantly battle the British Government as well as the Indian Government during that four years.”

In a personal message to Richard and Nazanin, Joanne added: “At times it can feel that there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, but every day is a day nearer to Nazanin being home.”

Sign the petition online at https://tinyurl.com/y4m3se2g