In the Kulbhushan Jadhav case, the Pakistan government has offered India a second consular access to 49-year-old Indian Navy officer who was sentenced to death by the Pakistani military court on the charges of espionage and terrorism in April 2017.
According to Pakistan media reports, On June 17 Jadhav was given the option to file a review petition, but he refused and wants to go ahead with his pending mercy plea.
“On June 17, 2020, Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav was invited to file a petition for review and reconsideration of his sentence and conviction. Exercising his legal right he refused to file a petition for review and reconsideration of his sentence and conviction,” Pakistan Additional Attorney General Ahmed Irfan claimed on Wednesday.
The Kulbhushan Jadhav case is one of the controversial case having India and Pakistan as parties in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The Indian side maintained that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from Navy. India challenged Pakistan’s decision in the International Court of Justice.
On July 17, 2019, the ICJ ruled that Pakistan must review the death sentence given to Kulbhushan Jadhav.
India had argued that consular access is being denied to Jadhav which is in violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
The ICJ in its 42-page order held that “a continued stay of execution constitutes an indispensable condition for the effective review” of the sentence of Kulbhushan Jadhav that had strained relations between the two neighboring countries.
However, the ICJ had rejected India’s remedies including annulment of the military court’s decision convicting Jadhav his release and safe passage to India.
On September 2, Pakistan granted consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav under the direction of the ICJ.
“In the first round, he met his mother and wife and now we have offered to let him meet his father and wife,” Irfan said in a press conference on Wednesday, reported Hindustan Times.