The International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague again takes up the case of India’s Kulbhushan Jadhav on Wednesday (September 13). His death penalty, ordered by a Pakistani military court, was stayed by the ICJ on May 18 and the case has dragged on, with India’s Harish Salve arguing, while Pakistan has now assigned its Attorney General to counter.
The Pakistani military court, while delivering its sentence, had said that the 47-year-old Jadhav was guilty of espionage and terrorism. Jadhav had no formal counsel to argue his case at the court and several of India’s requests for consular access have been denied by Pakistan.
India has maintained that Jadhav, a former naval officer, was in fact a businessman, acting on his own and had been kidnapped from Iran by ISIS and handed over the Pakistan.
The recent developments in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) have prompted Pakistan to also say that Jadhav had been secretly involved in creating security issues for the project. On the ground, however, since the corridor goes through several controversial and highly disputed areas such as Balochistan, the entire project is on a shaky footing.
With the recent abduction and killing of two Chinese teachers from the area by ISIS activists, the Chinese, too, are worried about the security of their $46 billion project and Pakistan is desperate to prove that they are on the right and that it was India who is trying to put a spanner in the works.
—India Legal Bureau