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A military court in Pakistan on Monday sentenced Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav to death over spying charges. He was allegedly arrested by Pakistani officials on March 3, 2016 on suspicion of espionage and sabotage activities against Pakistan. Pakistan claimed that Jadhav was working with the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in India and had been involved with Baloch separatists. He was allegedly arrested in Balochistan while he was entering through Iran.
Almost a month after his arrest, Pakistan released a video of Jadhav ‘confessing’ to being a spy for RAW. Officials in Pakistan had claimed that he was involved in fomenting terrorist activities in Karachi and Balochistan. Kulbushan Yadav says in the video that he had been directing various activities in Karachi and Balochistan “at the behest of RAW”, the Indian intelligence agency, and that he was still with the Indian Navy. He also says that he was recruited by RAW in 2013, but established “a base” in Iran’s Chabahar 10 years before that, making clandestine journeys to Karachi and Balochistan. According to officials in Pakistan, Jadhav had converted to Islam and worked at Gadani under the cover of a scrap dealer.
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.
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