The damning judgement delivered against Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum by a High Court judge in London raises difficult questions not only for the British government, which has encouraged its own royal family to have an intimate relationship with the powerful UAE vice-president and Prime Minister, but for India, too.

Andrew McFarlane, the most senior family judge in England and Wales, made it clear that he believes Indian special forces participated actively in snatching Princess Latifa, 34, one of the Sheikh’s older daughters, from a yacht and returning her to her father. Her hands were apparently tied behind her back.

The court case raises a fundamental question for both the UK and for India.

Which is more important — the human rights of a not very important princess or the strategic interests of a country with an oil rich Gulf Sheikhdom?

In both cases, it seems the former comes a distant second to the latter. There are millions of Indians working in the Gulf whose remittances are an important source of foreign exchange. The importance of oil is self-explanatory.

If a father wants the return of a runaway daughter, why upset him when so much is at stake? That’s Realpolitik. However, in the court of international opinion, India’s action in the Princess Latifa case has been made to look craven in media reports.

The court case was not about her, however. It was triggered by the decision by the Sheikh’s sixth and youngest wife, Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, 45, the half-sister of King Abdullah II of Jordan, to remain in the UK with her daughter, Al Jalila, 12, and son Zayed, eight.

The judge ruled against her husband and said she can. He also said his judgment could be published in full, which was not something the 70-year-old Sheikh had wanted.

What had happened to two other daughters from an earlier marriage helped the judge reach his decision that the Sheikh was a cruel father who was not to be trusted. He had “ordered and orchestrated” the abduction and forced return to Dubai of Sheikha Shamsa, then 19, in August 2000 and her sister Sheikha Latifa twice, in 2002 and again in 2018. McFarlane explained in his judgment delivered on Thursday that “a substantial element in the extreme concern (Princess Haya) has for the future well-being of her children arises from her belief that Shamsa and Latifa have been and are deprived of their liberty on an open-ended basis”.

Shamsa, now 38, was abducted from the streets of Cambridge on August 19, 2000, and has never been seen in public since.