Kulbhushan Jhadav Case: Government Directed to Contact India Once Again

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has directed Pakistan to contact the Indian government once again in the case of detained Indian spy Kulbhushan Jhadav.

A three-member larger bench headed by Chief Justice Athar Minallah heard the case regarding the provision of counsel to Kulbhushan Jhadav.

Chief Justice Athar Minallah while giving the remarks said that the Indian government should be contacted to find out whether they want to follow suit.

Chief Justice inquired whether the Indian government was not interested in the case of Kulbhushan Jhadav.

“I have no instructions. The attorney general will look into the matter,” Tayyab Shah said.

It may be recalled that on December 5, Pakistan had rejected the baseless and fabricated statement of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs regarding the case of arrested Indian spy Commander Kulbhushan Jhadav.

A statement issued by Foreign Office Spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhry said, “Pakistan categorically rejects the misleading and misleading statement made by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs regarding the ongoing legal hearings regarding Commander Kulbhushan Jhadav.

He said that it is clear from the statement of the Indian High Commission’s own lawyer that the Indian government wants to flee the legal process in the Kulbhushan Jhadav case.”

It may be recalled that the present service commander of the Indian Navy, Kulbhushan Jhadav alias Hussain Mubarak Patel, who was working for RAW, was arrested by the Pakistani law enforcement agencies on March 3, 2016, while entering Pakistan illegally.

The Indian spy had confessed before the magistrate and the court that he was responsible for RAW’s planning and coordination for terrorism in Pakistan as well as sabotaging the peace process and ongoing efforts in the war on terror.

Kulbhushan had also said that he made several visits to Karachi in 2004 and 2005 to carry out some basic tasks for RAW, while in 2016 he entered Balochistan via Iran.

A video of Kulbhushan Jhadav’s confession was also released by the Pakistan Army Public Relations (ISPR) in which he admitted that his purpose in entering Pakistan was to fund Baloch separatists.

A statement issued by ISPR in April 2017 said that Kulbhushan Yadav had been sentenced to death by a military court for his involvement in Pakistani espionage, sabotage operations in Karachi and Balochistan, later it was confirmed by Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

India had on May 9, 2017, filed an appeal in the International Court of Justice against the death sentence of Kulbhushan Yadav and requested that the ICJ stop Pakistan from executing the Indian spy who was scheduled to be heard.

In a petition to the International Court of Justice, India accused Pakistan of violating the Vienna Convention, saying that under the Vienna Convention, a person arrested on espionage charges could not be barred from access.

India had claimed that Kulbhushan Jhadav was an innocent businessman who was tortured after being abducted from Iran and forced to confess to being a RAW agent, but India could not provide any evidence of abduction.

Following which, on May 18, 2018, the International Court of Justice issued an interim order suspending the execution of Kulbhushan, after which the Foreign Office informed that on the orders of the ICJ, the Government of Pakistan directed the concerned agencies to comply.

Later, on July 17, 2019, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) handed down the final verdict in the case, according to which the death sentence handed down to Kulbhushan Yadav by the Pakistani military court was quashed and the Indian request for extradition of Kulbhushan was rejected. The court in its judgment had directed Pakistan to grant consular access to Kulbhushan, on which Pakistan had granted consular access to the Indian spy.

Earlier, in December 2017, Pakistan had arranged a meeting between Kulbhushan Jhadav and his wife and mother.

In addition, the first consular access given to Kulbhushan Yadav in September 2019 after the decision of the International Court of Justice was granted under the Vienna Convention and the decision of the International Court of Justice which lasted for 2 hours.

After which, in July 2020, Pakistan had given consular access to the detained and convicted Indian intelligence agency ‘RAW’ spy commander Kulbhushan Jhadav for the second time.

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