India Furious: Pak Kangaroo Court Frames
Captured Indian
It took the outrageous pronouncement of a killer verdict
from a Pakistani military court against an Indian businessman, to effect an
unprecedented parliamentary unity.
The man in question, former Indian Navy Commander Kulbhushan
Jadhav, was kidnapped, by Al Qaeda/Taliban in Iran.
He was subsequently sold to Pakistan’s ISI, a little before
the Pakistani terrorist attack on the Pathankot Airbase in January 2016.
The trumped-up charges of spying for India’s R.A.W., and a
three-month long kangaroo court-like proceeding against Jadhav, had MP after MP
on his feet demanding action and satisfaction.
On the 11th
of April, when news broke about Jadhav’s death sentence, the NDA had just
finished holding a celebratory meet after recent election successes. This, on
the auspicious occasion of Hamuman Jayanti.
And while parliament was in no mood to tolerate this latest
provocation from Pakistan, the day’s events also saw a motley crew of Indian
peaceniks inviting the Pakistani Ambassador, Abdul Basit, former Foreign
Minister Khurshid Kasuri and others, to tea at the India International Centre
(IIC), in New Delhi.
But, things did not go altogether to script at the IIC. It
ended with a scuffle and some cuts and bruises, when members in the audience objected
to Ambassador Basit, long thought of as a Pakistan Army nominee, calling Jadhav
a terrorist on a Pakistani TV channel.
The Pakistan Army court verdict on Jadhav was arrived at on
the strength of an ISIS style video-taped confession, obviously extracted under
duress, evidenced by its rough editing.
Jadhav was apparently not even accorded a defence counsel!
The Modi Government, via the Home Minister Rajnath Singh and
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, were the ones who called the death
sentence a primitive attempt towards “premeditated murder”.
Kulbhushan Jadhav travelled often between Chabahar Port area,
where he ran his business, and Tehran, in Iran. He was simply abducted on one
of these trips.
Pathankot, let us remember, came just after Modi’s impromptu
visit, dropping in to meet Nawaz Sharif at his daughter’s wedding near Lahore, on his way back from
Afghanistan.
The Pakistan Army made it clear then, and not for the first
time, that it is not interested in rapprochement with India.
The Pathankot attack and Jadhav’s emergence as a prisoner,
both underline the same grim fact.
Jadhav was transferred
into Pakistani hands along with his valid Indian passport and relevant
Iranian visa, becoming an instant pawn in the Pakistani narrative, that India
too played, if not at cross-border terrorism, then certainly at cross-border spying. And it
was stirring up trouble in Baluchistan.
A spy with transparent identification alone would tend to
rule him out of such games for the lack of deniability.
But, the Pakistan Army couldn’t care less, and seems
determined to use him for leverage anyway.
That is why there has been a variance in the pronouncements
made on Jadhav, by say, senior politico Sartaj Aziz, who said there was no
clinching evidence against him, and what is now emanating from apologists like
Defence Minister Khwaja Muhammad Asif.
Asif has been busy
since the 11th, drolly deflecting criticism for the ‘premeditated
murder’ barb, by citing atrocities here in India.
The broader implications of this sudden Pakistani action, in
violation of the Geneva Convention, suggests a new level of desperation.
Many of Pakistan’s initiatives to cause trouble in the
Kashmir Valley and elsewhere in India are losing traction, notwithstanding the
stone-pelting, arson, and insolent behaviour.
Something needs to be done to revive the hostility pitch and
prevent any possibilities of dialogue between the two countries. Hanging an
innocent man just because they can might just fit the bill.
This move signals, in short order, that Pakistan will not follow
international law on the treatment of captured Indians. In this, it draws
inspiration probably from North Korea, its old missile providing buddy.
But former R.A.W. Chief A.S. Dulat, familiar with Pakistan’s
ISI, scoffs at the notion that Jadhav will actually hang, hinting therefore
that this is a feint to keep the pot boiling.
That it will, if carried through, almost certainly invite
reciprocal and even punitive consequences from India, seems to be lost upon the
Pakistan Army. The loss of men for a cause does not bother Salafists or
Communists.
Is China egging Pakistan on for this one? Could be, but this
seems like very small potatoes in that context, or is there more, not in the
public domain?
Is Pakistan and China worried about Baluchistan and the CPEC/Gwadar
and India’s potential to wreck their plans. Perhaps.
Is the Pakistan Army just busy putting its own political
friends in their place in the run-up to elections in Pakistan?
The ISI, fighting with shadows and looking for scapegoats,
also captured a pair of Indian clerics, it must be remembered, recently.
It detained the head of the Nizamuddin Dargah in New Delhi
and his nephew, during their visit to Pakistan. They were let go off, after a
couple of days of questioning, but only after vigorous intervention of the
Indian Foreign Ministry.
Jadhav has been held without Indian consular access. It is a
who will blink first game. India refuses to agree that Jadhav is a spy and
grant Pakistan the equivalence it seeks. Pakistan won’t grant consular access
unless we agree that he is.
Jadhav now has 40 days to appeal the order in the Pakistan Appeals
Court, which may or may not be their High Court or even their Supreme Court in
this instance. And failing which, to beg the Army Chief and/or the President of Pakistan for clemency. Will
he have to do all this personally, without help?
India, officially ruled out of the action, cannot do the
knee-bending, even if it wanted to. It can only exert diplomatic, back-channel,
and internationally orchestrated pressure, to resolve the matter, and get
Jadhav returned home.
That it may not even have 40 days, should the Pakistan Army
decide to hang Jadhav in a hurry, is also a matter of no little concern.
And since the primary effort at the moment is to save Jadhav’s
life and secure his return, all other options on retaliation are necessarily on
the back-burner.
Meanwhile, scrambling already for legitimacy in the face of
the hue and cry raised by India, Pakistan is trying to retrofit Jadhav’s name
with that of a minor Balochi mafia don it has been holding in custody for even
longer.
However, internationally, even spies are tried in the civil
courts during peacetime, and guaranteed “due process”. This is a bit of a
Pakistani PR problem, but the uniforms seem determined to ignore it.
The use of a military court in this instance, and the death
sentence, might also, some suggest, be a
desire to urgently swap Jadhav with some of their assets languishing
in Indian jails.
But, going by the past, the Pakistanis are not very keen on
claiming any nationals caught on the Indian side for any reason.
In this context, more fevered theories include the notion
that India may, or may not have, spirited a former ISI Lt.Colonel out of
Pakistan into Nepal, and thence from Kathmandu to Lumbini, and finally into its
“non-state actor” clutches across the Indian border.
Is this man for questioning, or trading, if we really do
have him? Does he have anything to say, and does Pakistan care? The US/USSR
Cold War parallels may be vastly overblown here.
The manner of the doings with Jadhav, certainly reiterates
the point that it is the Army, at Rawalpindi, and not the political
dispensation, at Islamabad, that truly runs the country.
And the Pakistan Army, as usual, wishes to maintain its
visceral hatred for India unchanged in order
to maintain its domestic ascendancy.
For: The Sunday Guardian
(1,283 words)
April 12th, 2017
Gautam Mukherjee
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