Who is Kulbhushan Jadhav? All you need to know

Read | Pakistan’s ‘spy’ video raises questions, Jadhav’s India trail offers clues

India maintains that Pakistan never had clear evidence against Jadhav. The Ministry of External Affairs had then said that the video was doctored and fake. The video seemed poorly cut and several parts were spliced together. While in one part, Jadhav says he retired in 2002 after the 2001 Parliament attacks, later in the video he says he was due to retire in 2022. While he refers to ‘criminal activity’ in the country, he doesn’t elaborate on it.

There were also reports of Iran investigating the case since Jadhav was purportedly carrying out operations from there. Iranian Ambassador to India Gholamreza Ansari had then said that reports of the same had been shared informally with New Delhi.

Pakistan had declined to extradite Jadhav last week.

Jadhav was identified in India as the son of Sudhir Jadhav, a retired Assistant Commissioner of Police in Mumbai. His uncle, Subhash Jadhav, was in charge of the Bandra police station in 2002 when the hit-and-run case was registered there against Bollywood actor Salman Khan. According to sources from his family, Jadhav had sough premature retirement from the Navy in order to start his own business.

Read | Access to Jadhav: India goes slow in ‘spy’ case after Tehran launches probe

Details about his involvement with the RAW are ambiguous. Jadhav obtained a passport (E6934766) from Pune in November 2003. This passport identified him with the pseudonym Hussein Mubarak Patel. According to this passport, Jadhav was born in 1968 and joined the Navy in 1987. His batchmates remember him as an elusive person, who never attended reunions and remained absent for long periods. To one, he dropped broad hints of being involved in government-linked activity. The address on his passport too was incomplete.

Not much is known of his stay in Iran. According to sources in Chabahar, Jadhav lived with his family; his family, however, declined to comment on this. The Indian theory regards his arrest as one done by deceit. According to officials, Jadhav may have been lured into Pakistan since he was caught with his original passport.