Alleged Indian ‘spy’ Sarabjit Singh too was on death row

While India and Pakistan routinely accuse each other of spying, death sentence awarded to spies has been rare. However, in 2013, Sarabjit Singh – who was sentenced to death for spying in Pakistan was killed in jail after being attacked by fellow inmates. He was on the death row for 16 years.

In 1999, another Indian, Sheikh Shamim, was hanged in a Pakistani jail almost ten years after he was caught “red-handed” near the border and arrested on charges of spying.

Kulbhushan Jadhav’s death sentence for spying by a Pakistani army court is said to be the first time an alleged ‘spy’ has been court martialled.

Pakistani media have been carrying the Pakistani army’s version that Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav was a “spy working for the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW)” and was sent to Balochistan to ‘sabotage’ the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

“His goal was to disrupt development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), with Gwadar port as a special target,” Pakistan’s previous head of military media wing, the Inter Service Public Relations (ISPR), was quoted in Pakistani media last year.

Pakistan’s leading English daily The Express Tribune quoted unnamed security officials as saying that Jadhav was part of Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s ‘Offensive Defensive’ doctrine that aimed at creating retaliatory disturbances in Pakistan in response to alleged ISI-sponsored terrorism in India.

In an op-ed published in March last year around the time Jadhav was arrested, The Express Tribune dubbed Jadhav as personifying the “counter-terror policy of Ajit Kumar Doval”.

In a republished article from April last year, Karachi-based Dawn noted that Jadhav had said at the time of his arrest that he was an Indian Navy officer, which was different from the Indian government’s initial statement calling him a businessman “who had taken an early retirement from the government”.

In another report put up on Dawn’s website on Monday, it was claimed that Jadhav’s telephone calls in Marathi to his family “gave away his identity”. The report went on to claim, “Indian intelligence officials suspected that Jadhav's phone was under surveillance by the Pakistani intelligence, and that his habits and mannerisms, including phone calls in Marathi to his family, gave away his identity.”

Geo News quoted Pakistan’s defence minister Khwaja Asif as saying that Jadhav’s arrest would ‘serve as a warning to those engaged in terrorism in Pakistan’. “Yadav (Jadhav) came (with) the approval of the Indian government… there is no doubt that India is fuelling terrorism in Pakistan,” Geo News quoted Asif as saying.

A Geo News editorial had in March last year said that Jadhav ‘wasn’t the first Indian spy to have been caught in Pakistan.’

Pakistan’s National Security Advisor had stated in the country’s Parliament earlier this month that Islamabad wasn’t considering any option to hand over Jadhav. “We have prepared an FIR (First Information Report) and a case is in the process of registration to prosecute the Indian state actor for involvement in subversive and terrorist activities in Pakistan,” Aziz was quoted as saying in Pakistani media.

Compiled by Dhairya Maheshwari