[The Pakistani military said Monday Mr. Yadan was a “spy” who “was tried through Field General Court-Martial,” referring to a court-martial trial of heinous crimes, dedicated to cases involving foreign agents and spies.]
By
Salman Masood and Hari Kumar
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An image on a screen at a
news conference held by the Pakistani army in 2016
regarding the Indian
naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was sentenced
to death on Monday.
Credit Anjum Naveed/Associated Press
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ISLAMABAD,
Pakistan — An Indian naval officer
arrested last year and charged with espionage and sabotage was sentenced to
death Monday, the Pakistani military said, a decision that is likely to further
strain relations between the two nations.
The condemned naval officer, Kulbhushan Jadhav,
was arrested in March 2016 in Baluchistan, the restive province in Southwest
Pakistan, where a separatist insurgency has simmered for decades. Pakistani
military officials described the capture of Mr. Jadhav as a major
counterintelligence victory. He was accused of running a clandestine terror
network within the province and of participating in various activities meant to
destabilize the country.
The Indian ministry of external affairs reacted
sharply to the Pakistani announcement, issuing a protest to Pakistan’s high
commissioner in New Delhi, which said if the sentence were carried out, “the
government and people of India will regard it as a case of premeditated
murder.”
The Pakistani military said Monday Mr. Yadan
was a “spy” who “was tried through Field General Court-Martial,” referring to a
court-martial trial of heinous crimes, dedicated to cases involving foreign
agents and spies.
The Pakistani military also asserted that Mr.
Jadhav confessed before a magistrate that he was assigned by India’s spy
agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, “to plan and organize espionage
and sabotage activities” in Baluchistan Province and Karachi, the southern port
city that is the country’s commercial hub.
Soon after Mr. Jadhav’s arrest in March 2016,
the Pakistani military had released a video in which Mr. Jadhav confessed to
espionage. Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, the army chief, confirmed the death sentence
on Monday, the military said.
India disputes Pakistan’s accusations, which
has often been the case in the testy relations between the two estranged,
nuclear-armed neighbors. India gave a starkly different version of Mr. Jadhav’s
arrest and profession.
Indian officials accused Pakistan of kidnapping
Mr. Jadhav, whom they described as a former Navy officer, and said that
repeated efforts for access to Mr. Jadhav were denied. Mr. Jadhav is also known
to spell his surname Yadav and, according to Pakistani officials, he used the
alias Hussain Mubarak Patel.
India’s foreign ministry said that the proceedings
that led to the sentence against Mr. Jadhav “were farcical in the absence of
any credible evidence against him” and added that the Indian High Commission,
its diplomatic mission in Pakistan, was not even informed that Mr. Jadhav was
being brought to trial.
A. S. Dulat, a former Indian spy chief, said in
an interview that the news of the death sentence came as a surprise and was a
further setback in relations between the two neighbors. “This is unbelievable
kind of thing, shocking. This comes out of blue without any knowledge of trial,
or evidence of the case and suddenly you hear that man is going to be hanged,”
Mr. Dulat said by phone.
Mr. Dulat said “spies are caught everywhere all
the time.” “You ask for a favor. Somebody returns a favor. That’s how it is.
You don’t hang people. In normal circumstances, you don’t hang the people like
this,” he said.
Farooq Hameed Khan, a retired Pakistani
brigadier and defense analyst based in Lahore, Pakistan, said Mr. Jadhav was no
ordinary catch for Pakistan. “He was not just a spy. Indian spy rings have been
busted in the past. Jadhav is a serving Indian navy officer, who was working
for RAW and involved in terror activities. He is a murderer. He is a
terrorist.”
“The death sentence is a big development and
sends a very strong message to India that its attempts to sow terror inside
Pakistan will not be tolerated,” Mr. Khan said.
“It only worsens the prospects of
India-Pakistan dialogue. I don’t see any government in India going on bended
knees to have a dialogue,” said G. Parthasarathy, a former Indian diplomat.
Mr. Khan said that in the wake of the death
sentence, a halt to the peace dialogue between the two countries was a foregone
conclusion.
“India will now exert political, diplomatic and
even military pressure to stop the execution. I expect things will heat up on
the Line of Control and Working Boundary,” he said referring to the heavily
militarized border along Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan region that is claimed
by both countries.
Hari Kumar reported from New Delhi.