Pakistan hasn’t given Kulbhushan Jadhav the right to appeal, even after the ICJ’s 2019 ruling. India says the trial was unfair and the verdict wasn’t followed properly.
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ASIA: Indian citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav, who is currently in a jail in Pakistan, was not given the proper right to appeal against his sentence, even after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gave a ruling in 2019.
According to Pakistan’s newspaper Dawn, the ICJ ruling only focused on giving consular access to Mr Jadhav and did not directly deal with the appeal process.
The ICJ had ruled in June 2019 in favour of India. In that judgment, the court confirmed that Mr Jadhav should be allowed consular access. The ICJ also asked Pakistan to “review and reconsider” his conviction and death sentence.
Recently, Pakistan’s Defence Ministry lawyer Khawaja Haris Ahmed brought up Mr Jadhav’s case in front of a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. This happened during a legal proceeding involving Pakistani citizens who were convicted by military courts for allegedly participating in large-scale protests after the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan in May 2023.
The Pakistani government described the events of May 9, 2023, as a “Black Day” because of the riots that took place after Mr Khan’s arrest.
During the hearing, Mr Khawaja Haris Ahmed told the court that the right to appeal, which was available to Mr Jadhav, was “not given to Pakistan’s own citizens who were convicted in the May 2023 riots cases.”
The Supreme Court of Pakistan was also informed that Attorney General Mansoor Usman Awan was still discussing the legal matter of whether those convicted for the May 9 incidents could be given a chance to appeal in higher courts. Dawn reported that the Attorney General had requested “a couple of days” for these deliberations.
Pakistan has claimed that Mr Jadhav was arrested in 2016 from Balochistan on serious charges of espionage and terrorism.
India, however, has completely denied these accusations. The Indian government stated that Mr Jadhav was actually kidnapped from the Iranian port city of Chabahar, where he had been doing business after retiring from the Indian Navy.
In its 2019 ruling, the ICJ made it very clear that Mr Jadhav’s execution should not be carried out until Pakistan has properly reviewed and reconsidered the case, along with the sentence.
But even after one year of the ICJ’s decision, in July 2020, India said that Pakistan had not fully followed the ICJ’s orders. The Indian government stated that Pakistan had failed to implement the court’s decision in “letter and spirit”, even though the ICJ had accepted India’s argument that Pakistan violated the Vienna Convention by not giving consular access.
India has also strongly criticised the military court proceedings against Mr Jadhav and has called the entire trial process “farcical”.
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