A still from the video released today.
New Delhi: Pakistan today released another video of Indian death row prisoner Kulbhushan Jadhav purportedly confessing that he was a commissioned officer of the Indian Navy and that the diplomat who was accompanying his family for the meeting yelled at his mother.
However, the veracity of the video which was released by the Pakistan Foreign Office could not be ascertained. It was not released to the public but a screening was organised for the press. All videos online are only secondary videos of the screening. The Wire has prepared a transcript of the video available online, parts of which are inaudible or unclear. Jadhav is heard saying:
“…my mother came over. it was a very pleasant… one and my mother was very happy to see me in a good state, my physical fitness, and she was really very satisfied, and she said also: “I am feeling very relaxed after seeing you. I am satisfied.” She said also. She said a dua that is among the Hindus very common, for me.
I said “don’t worry Mummy…now that you are happy I have so many things. My diet is very beautiful, I have done a very good thing here, they have taken care of me. They have not harmed me, they have not touched me”. She believed once she saw me personally.
But I have to say one thing very important here for the Indian public and Indian crowd and Indian Government and Indian navy that my commission is not gone. I am a Commissioned Officer of the Indian Navy and my mother and my wife have been briefed very strongly. They were being told, they were being…I saw fear in the eyes of my mother and wife. Why should there be fear? Whatever has happened has happened. There shouldn’t be fear in the eyes of my mother and my wife. They have been threatened. The Indian diplomat or Indian person who had come along with my mother was shouting on my mother the moment she stepped out or she was yelling at her (inaudible). Had she gone out on … (inaudible) to meet me? This gesture was a positive gesture so that she feels happy, and I feel happy. And then the Indian diplomat or person standing outside is yelling at her?
We in India and Pakistan are supposed to subsequently forget our enmity and go in a positive direction or is it supposed to keep on hanging around or lingering around like this?
while I was commissioned and that I was working on an intelligence agency… it is being denied or what is the whole issue… okay I was doing a business tour. That’s okay
I stand up by the fact that I was doing something for RAW and I am a soldier. was doing something for my country. I have done this.
law enforcing agencies are going about that.…my mother and wife are being battled and troubled here… (inaudible)
This is not done this way. This is not a pleasant thing. This was supposed to be pleasant thing.
My mother went in shock. She said that this can’t be said and what is this.
I am very grateful to both the governments. Indian government and Pakistani government. but this is… I am feeling very sad that my mother… (inaudible) threatened… (inaudible)”
India dismissed the new video of Jadhav as “propagandistic exercises with no credibility”.
MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar noted that the release of the video was not a surprise, as it was part of a series of video statements. “This does not come as a surprise. Pakistan is simply continuing its practice of putting out coerced statements on video. It is time for them to realise that such propagandistic exercises simply carry no credibility,” he said.
He claimed that the “absurdity of a captive under duress certifying his own welfare while mouthing allegations of his captors clearly merits no comment”.
“Pakistan is best advised to fulfil its international obligations, whether it pertains to consular relations or UNSC resolutions 1267 and 1373 on terrorism and to desist from continuing violations of human rights of an Indian national,” added Kumar.
Diplomatic sources indicated that the timing of the release of the video may have been mainly to turn the domestic narrative in Pakistan away from the impending cuts in aid by the United States over alleged inaction against Afghan-based terror groups.
India had also asserted that Jadhav appeared coerced and under considerable stress during the tightly-controlled interaction on December 25 in the Pakistan Foreign Office.
During the meeting, pictures of which were released by Pakistan, Jadhav was seen sitting behind a glass screen while his mother and wife sat on the other side. They spoke through intercom and the entire 40-minute proceedings appeared to have been recorded on video.
In the purported video, Jadhav said, “I saw fear in her (mother’s) eyes, the Indian diplomat was shouting at my mother the moment she stepped out. I saw him shouting, yelling at her. This [meeting] was a positive gesture, so that she [my mother] could be happy and I could be happy.”
However, it was not clear how Jadhav saw the diplomat shouting at his mother once she stepped out. The diplomat accompanying Jadhav’s family was India’s deputy high commissioner in Islamabad.
Jadhav, who was captured in March, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court for alleged spying, an accusation that India has dismissed as concocted.
(With PTI inputs)