Daily Times

Pakistan has provided second consular access to Indian spy Commander Kulbhushan Jadhav on India’s request, the Foreign Office confirmed on Thursday.

“Two consular officers of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad were provided unimpeded and uninterrupted consular access to Commander Jadhav at 1500 hours,” according to a Foreign Office statement issued here. It said Pakistan remains committed to fully implementing the International Court of Justice’s judgment of July 17, 2019. “It is hoped that India will cooperate with the Pakistan court in giving full effect to the said judgment,” it said.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that two officials from the Indian High commission in Islamabad – who had been provided consular access – left without hearing him out. In a statement, he said that consular access was given according to the terms agreed upon. “India’s ill intentions have come to light. They didn’t want consular access. [Jhadav] kept asking the Indian diplomats to talk to him and they left,” he said.

Calling the behaviour of the officials ‘astonishing’, Qureshi questioned that if Indian diplomats didn’t want to talk to Jadhav, why did they ask for consular access. “They had objected to the glass that had been placed in the middle so we removed it. They had also objected to audio and video recordings so that was also not done. We fulfilled all their requests, but still they left.” he said.

On Thursday, Pakistan also reiterated its offer to file an appeal in the IHC against Jadhav’s conviction. “The time limit for filing a review petition is 60 days [set to expire on July 19]. We hope that India will cooperate in this regard,” the Foreign Office spokesperson said.

Last year, Jadhav was given first consular access under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations 1963 on September 2. Earlier, the mother and wife of Commander Jadhav were also allowed to meet him on December 25, 2017, as a humanitarian gesture.

Indian serving navy commander Jadhav is in Pakistan’s custody following his arrest from Balochistan in a counter-intelligence operation on March 3, 2016. He was awarded death sentence on charges of espionage after he confessed to his involvement in terrorist activities inside Pakistan which resulted in loss of many precious human lives. He also made important revelations about RAW’s role in sponsoring state-terrorism in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Pakistan on Thursday called for enhanced international monitoring and continued reporting by the United Nations on the human rights crisis in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) to save lives, dignity and freedom of the Kashmiri people.

Foreign Office Spokesperson Aisha Farooqui at the weekly press briefing said continued brutalization of innocent people in the Indian valley has entered the 346th day after India revoked the special status of the territory on August 5 last year. She said Kashmiris are facing illegal occupation of Indian security forces for over seven decades.

She mentioned that recently, the Indian occupation forces during their continued so-called cordon-and-search operations martyred eight Kashmiris, including Idrees Ahmad Bhat, Ajaz Ahmad, Muahmmad Usman, Saifullah Mir, Zahid Ahmad and Waleed Ahmad in Kupwara, Baramulla and Islamabad districts of the occupied valley.

The FO spokesperson said the UN human rights machinery in recent months has highlighted India’s non-compliance with its international human rights obligations. “Through several official communications, nearly a dozen UN special rapporteurs have raised serious concerns over India’s consistent pattern of arbitrary arrests, detentions, torture, corporal punishment, extra-judicial killings, and physical and digital lockdown in occupied Jammu and Kashmir,” she added.

On 89th Kashmir Martyrs’ Day, she said the government and people of Pakistan joined Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) and across the globe to pay homage to the 22 innocent, unarmed Kashmiris who stood up for truth and justice against the tyranny of Dogra Rule in 1931.

She said across the world, conferences, webinars and peace walks were organized to draw the attention of the world conscience towards the long struggle for fundamental rights of the people of Kashmir. During last week, she said Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi held telephonic conversations with Chinese foreign minister and state councillor and secretary general of the Economic Cooperation Organization. “In these interactions, the foreign minister shared our deep concern over the situation in Kashmir and underlined the importance of urgent steps by the international community to help address the grave situation,” she said.