Court of Appeal refuses Jagjit Kaur's late challenge to contempt committal in Gill v Kaur

The Court of Appeal has refused an application by Jagjit Kaur for an extension of time, of around six months, to appeal against an order activating an 18 month suspended sentence for contempt of court, in a long-running family dispute concerning her brothers, Tarnjit Singh Gill and Jagjit Singh Gill.

In Tarnjit Singh Gill & Anor v Jagjit Kaur [2026] EWCA Civ 833, Lady Justice Andrews, with whom Lady Justice Whipple agreed, dismissed Ms Kaur's applications to extend time to challenge both the original Suspended Committal Order made by Dias J in June 2025 and the subsequent Activation Order made by Robin Knowles J in August 2025. The court also refused a related application to discharge her committal under CPR 81.10 and declined to grant bail.

The underlying contempt findings arose from three committal applications brought reluctantly by Ms Kaur's brothers, concerning breaches of disclosure orders made by Butcher J and Joanna Smith J, and breach of a proprietary injunction restraining dealings in the shares or assets of a company. Dias J found each allegation proved to the criminal standard, proceeding to sentence in Ms Kaur's absence after concluding that an adjournment was unlikely to secure her engagement. The sentence was suspended for two years on conditions requiring disclosure of outstanding information, conditions Ms Kaur subsequently failed to meet, prompting activation of the sentence and her arrest at Heathrow in February 2026.

Applying the three-stage test in Denton v TH White, the court found the delay, some eleven months in respect of the proposed challenge to the Suspended Committal Order, to be serious and significant, with no good reason advanced for it. Lady Justice Andrews noted that Ms Kaur had been personally served with the relevant orders, supported by photographic and process server evidence, undermining suggestions that she lacked knowledge of the proceedings. The judgement described her conduct as, at best, "an extreme case of Nelsonian blindness".

The court had previously adjourned the matter in April 2026 to allow Ms Kaur to demonstrate genuine efforts towards purging her contempt, making clear that only evidence of concrete steps from her personally would suffice. Her subsequent witness statement, running to 84 paragraphs, was found to fall well short of that standard, focusing instead on grievances against her brothers without offering credible commitments to provide the missing information. The court was not satisfied that further adjournment or conditional bail would alter that position.

Considering the merits of the proposed grounds of appeal on a de bene esse basis, the court found them bound to fail. Challenges to the proportionality of the sentence, including arguments concerning the impact on Ms Kaur's children, were rejected on the basis that Dias J had expressly weighed that factor in deciding to suspend rather than impose an immediate custodial sentence. A complaint regarding the absence of an express distinction between coercive and punitive elements of the sanction was held not to disclose any legal error, following Business Mortgage Finance 4 plc v Hussain.

Grounds challenging the Activation Order on procedural grounds, including failure to hold a public hearing or publish a reasoned judgement, were found to be misconceived, as CPR 81.8 applies only to substantive contempt proceedings and not to a subsequent application to activate a previously imposed suspended sentence.

The court concluded that Ms Kaur retained the means to purge her contempt and ordered her to pay the respondents' costs, subject to the usual restrictions applicable to a legally aided party.