Former Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj when suffered a fatal cardiac arrest and was taken to AIIMS, she asked senior lawyer Harish Salve to “come and collect his fee of Re 1” for representing India at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case. On Friday, Bansuri Swaraj, her daughter fulfilled that promise.
Swaraj Kaushal, Sushma Swaraj’s husband and former governor of Mizoram, shared the news in a tweet in Hindi that their daughter visited Salve on Friday and presented him with a one-rupee coin.
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“Bansuri has fulfilled your last wish today. One rupee of the fees of Kulbhushan Jadhav’s case which you had left, she has presented to Mr. Harish Salve ji today,” he wrote.
Former naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav is on death row in Islamabad over allegations of spying and terrorism. He was held by the Pakistani government in March 2016 on charges of espionage.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) on July 17 ordered Pakistan not to execute Kulbhushan Jadhav and directed “effective review and reconsideration” of his conviction and the sentence awarded to him by a military court.
The world court, while rejecting all objections raised by Pakistan, directed it to grant consular access to Jadhav “without further delay”, while holding that it had “breached” the Vienna Convention in this regard by denying him this right.
The ICJ gave a detailed verdict rejecting all the objections of Pakistan, including one unanimously on the admissibility of the case and also the claims by Islamabad that India had not provided the actual nationality of Jadhav.
The verdict was 15 to one in favour of India – the lone dissenter being from Pakistan.
Swaraj passed away on August 6 after suffering from cardiac arrest. She was 67 years old. Sushma Swaraj, who had a kidney transplant in 2016, had opted out of the Lok Sabha polls earlier this year citing health reasons.
