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Vijaya Pushkarna
Vijaya Pushkarna

CONTROVERSY

Meeting gone awry

PTI12_25_2017_000049B Near, yet so far: Kulbhushan Jadhav meeting his mother and wife at the Pakistan Foreign Office in Islamabad | PTI

India and Pakistan lock horns over the alleged mistreatment of Kulbhushan Jadhav’s family in Islamabad

It was Christmas, and Kulbhushan Jadhav’s mother, Avantika, and wife, Chetankul, went bearing a gift for him to Islamabad. Jadhav, according to Pakistan, was arrested on espionage charges in Balochistan in March 2016. He was convicted by a Pakistani military court and sentenced to death in April 2017. But, India maintains that he was a former naval officer, doing business in Iran, from where he was kidnapped. His case is pending before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The 40-minute meeting, however, brought little cheer to the two women. A thick glass panel separated them from Jadhav, and they could only talk to him through a telephone. “His mother would have wanted to plant a kiss on his forehead, they would have wanted to hug him, talk to him freely, but nothing of that sort happened. What satisfaction would this meeting have provided them?” asked Dalbir Kaur, whose brother Sarabjit Singh, a farmer from Punjab, had strayed into Pakistan and was later convicted in the 1990 Lahore bomb blast case. He died in April 2013 after fellow inmates at the jail attacked him. Dalbir had met Sarabjit when he was on the death row and had carried back greeting cards that he had made for his daughters. As for Jadhav’s gift, he hadn’t received it even after a day following the meeting, according to Pakistan’s Dawn News.

The manner in which the meeting of the Jadhav family was conducted has outraged India and further strained the ever fragile Indo-Pak relations. Pakistan had said the meeting was a humanitarian gesture to mark founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s birth anniversary. Its foreign office released video recordings of Jadhav saying that he was fine and was being treated well. From the grant of visa to seeing the Jadhav family off, Pakistan played to the international gallery. Also, the foreign office spokesperson said Avantika and Chetankul had thanked them for everything.

But, after meeting Avantika and Chetankul on their return, India, in a hard-hitting statement, said that Pakistan had “conducted the meeting in a manner which violated the letter and spirit of our understandings”. The two governments had earlier worked out the modalities of the meeting, and one of them was that the media would not be allowed “close access” to the Jadhav family. The Pakistani press, however, “was allowed on multiple occasions to approach family members closely, harass and hector them and hurl false and motivated accusations about Jadhav”.

Citing security, Pakistan made Avantika and Chetankul remove their mangalsutra, bangles and bindi, and also made them change clothes. Moreover, during her conversation with Jadhav, Avantika was constantly interrupted when she spoke in Marathi, and was told to speak in Hindi.

India is also affronted by the manner in which the family members were taken to the meeting without informing India’s Deputy High Commissioner J.P. Singh. While he did join them after pressing the matter with concerned officials, there was yet another glass wall between him and the ladies, thus not allowing him “access to the meeting as agreed”. India has reasons to believe that Jadhav “was under considerable stress and speaking in an atmosphere of coercion.... His appearance also raises questions of his health and well-being.”

But, what has worsened the war of words are the shoes worn by Chetankul that were not returned by the foreign office despite repeated requests. Following protests from India, Pakistan said the shoes had a metallic object in it and had been sent for forensic examination.

The Jadhav women, however, hope Pakistan will stand by what it said—that this was not the last meeting.

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