The Pakistani army has also released a second video in which he reiterated his ‘confession’ of being involved in fomenting terror and sectarian activities.
Kulbhushan Jadhav, seen her making his second ‘confession’ in a video recorded in April 2017 by the Pakistani army and released by DG, ISPR on June 22, 2017
New Delhi: The Pakistan army on Thursday announced that former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav had filed a mercy petition against his death sentence before the Pakistan army chief and also released a second ‘confessional video’ – both of which India described as attempt to influence the proceedings of the International court of Justice.
In April 2017, A Pakistani military court had sentenced Jadhav to death, claiming that he had masterminded espionage activities in Pakistan. India had subsequently challenged Jadhav’s detention and sentence before the Hague-based International Court of Justice. Accepting India’s plea for provisional measures, the UN’s principal judicial organ ordered a stay on the execution till its final judgment in the matter was passed. India has to submit its ‘memorial’ – a legal statement containing all pertinent facts and arguments – to the ICJ by September 13, while Pakistan has till December 13 to reply with its ‘counter-memorial’. It is only after that that substantial oral arguments will take place.
On Thursday, the Pakistan army’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) announced that Jadhav had filed a mercy petition before General Raheel Sharif. Simultaneously, the ISPR released a second “confessional video’ recording of Jadhav, claiming that “world should know what India has done and continues to do against Pakistan”.
The ISPR press release also revealed that Jadhav had appealed earlier to the Military Appellate Court, which had rejected his petition.
The mercy petition to the army chief is the next step for Jadhav. If rejected, the ISPR release stated, Jadhav’s last hope for a reprieve is the president of Pakistan, Mamnoon Hussain.
Pakistan claims that Jadhav is a serving Indian naval officer and had been taken into custody after crossing the border into Balochistan from Iran. India denies all the allegations, asserting that Jadhav had retired from service and was a private citizen, and that he had been kidnapped from inside Iranian territory.
India slammed Pakistan for the release of the video, as well as, the ‘information’ about the filing of mercy petition by Jadhav, accusing Islamabad of attempting to influence the ICJ.
“The developments bring out once again the lack of transparency and farcical nature of proceedings against Mr. Jadhav on concocted charges, continued violation of his legal and consular rights and an attempt to introduce prejudice in the proceedings in the International Court of Justice,” said external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay on Thursday night.
Baglay claimed that Pakistan never disclosed to the ICJ during the oral hearings on provisional measures that Jadhav had made an appeal before the military appellate tribunal. He pointed out that this “purported appeal” by Jadhav has “effectively prevented his parents from pursuing the appeal and the petition filed by Mr Jadhav’s mother”.
Expressing doubts over Pakistan’s claims about a mercy petition, the Indian spokesperson said, “The details and circumstances of the alleged mercy petition by Mr Jadhav are not clear and even the fact of its existence is doubtful, shrouded as the proceedings against Mr Jadhav have been in opacity”.
Claiming that “manufactured facts cannot alter the reality”, Baglay said that Pakistan’s claim “do not detract from the fact” that Islamabad is in violation of “its international obligation to India and Mr Jadhav”.
India’s suit in the ICJ is based on its contention that Pakistan had violated the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR) by refusing to allow consular access to Jadhav after he was taken into custody.
Baglay revealed that India had earlier this week also sent another demand for consular access, as well as a request for grant of visas to Jadhav’s family.
“India is determined to pursue the matter in the ICJ and is confident that justice will be done without being affected in any manner by these unwarranted and misleading steps taken by Pakistan,” he said.
Video recorded in April 2017
Compared to Jadhav’s first ‘confessional’ video, which was shown on Pakistani television soon after his arrest was made public last year, the second one – released on June 22 but recorded sometime in April 2017 – is slicker and longer, with more unusual camera angles. The March 29, 2016 video ran for six minutes, while the latest video is over ten minutes long.
In this video, Jadhav again reiterated the claims he made in the first video, but provided a few more details about his “activities”.
He claimed that he was recruited into RAW – the Research & Analysis Wing, India’s external spy agengy – after Indian RAW officials “realised” that Narendra Modi would come to power in 2014.
Jadhav alleged that he travelled from Chabahar port in Iran in a private taxi to the Iran-Pakistan border, before crossing into Pakistan along with “Baloch sub-nationals’. He further noted that he was accompanied by a person called “Rakesh” on the taxi ride. However, he did not give any more detail on the fate of “Rakesh”.
He also seems to offer an explanation for the questions raised by the Indian government about the fact that an Indian passport was recovered from him. India had asked “why a spy on a mission to a foreign country would carry an original passport with him”.
Jadhav claims that during his “movement” into Pakistan, he was carrying his “passports” with the official Iran visa till the Iranian border “so that if Iranian authorities or Iranian people who are about to check me or I am stopped or checked, I should have a legitimate reason for movement within Iran and my subsequent movement into Pakistan and then backwards”.
“While I was not intending to having been caught so on my movement backwards again, I would have had a legitimate reason to go about, with that passport with the legitimate visa of Iran,” he added.
Jadhav again said that his direct ‘handler’ was Anil Kumar – director of RAW since January 31, 2017, and earlier a special director within the organisation – who had apparently told him directly about various operations. Further, he claimed to have been “directly” involved in “transaction” of $40,000 “recently” to a Baloch national within Pakistan. However, he did not provide any more information.
He also said that he was aware of the “plan” of RAW officials to attack the Pakistani consulate in Zahedan in a “military style attack”.
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Recording and transcript of second video of Kulbhushan Jadhav released by Pakistan army. According to the ISPR, this was recorded in “April 2017”:
I am Commander Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav. Number 41558Zulu of the Indian Navy
I am a commissioned officer in the Indian Navy. And my alias name was Hussain Mubarak Patel. And I was basically..I’d visited Karachi on 2 occasions in 2005 and 2006 for basic intelligence gathering on Naval installations and subsequent detail. Basically gathering information on the landing sites around Karachi and various naval vessels or whatever I could gather about the navy.
The RAW officials had started sniffing that the Modi government will be in power by 2014. So I was inducted and my services were handed over to Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). And the aim was to see that all the activities around the Mekran Coast and Karachi and Balochistan Interior, Turbat and Quetta were to be organized and nicely coordinated.
Subsequently, me along with Anil Kumar had a meeting with Alok Joshi, wherein the plans and the finalization of the activities along the Mekran Coast and Karachi were finalized. I was stationed in Chahbahar, the Iranian Port City under a fictitious name “Hussein Mubarak Patel” and I was running a business there ‘Kaminda Trading company’. It was a discreet non embassy based operation exclusively meant to conduct meetings with Baloch insurgents and terrorists. The aim of these meetings was always to see that the aims and the targets of RAW to conduct the various terrorist activities within Balochistan are conveyed properly to the insurgents and any kinds of requirements of them are conveyed back to the RAW officials.
My purpose of this time visit to Pakistan was to establish and meet the basic leadership of Baloch sub-nationals, the BLA or the BRA and establish and Infiltrate around 30 to 40 RAW operatives along the Makran Coast for Operations along with Baloch sub-nationals and miscreants or Terrorists.
The aim was to have RAW operatives on field so that they could facilitate and help the Baloch sub-nationals in carrying out precision targets to be carried out… precision…I would say sort of a military sort of a connection to the entire Operation.
Balochistan doesn’t have a movement on the sea, so the aim was to raise within the Baloch sub-nationals a sea front, so that the activities could be properly coordinated from the sea side and subsequently taken on further inwards, may be Quetta or Turbat or maybe interiors of various places.
The subsequent activities which were then handed over by RAW when I subsequently started working for Research and analysis wing, the main aim was focused to Balochistan and the Karachi region. The idea was to see to it that the sub-nationals with in this region were facilitated and supported financially and with arms and ammunition, weapons and some kind of maybe man and material movement also across the coast.
So me being a naval officer, I was given the task of seeing that how they could be landed across the Mekran coast, between Gwadar, Jewani or whichever suitable points were there across this belt. And the main ideology beyond this was that the economic and the various activities which go along the CPEC region between Gwadar and China had to be distorted and disrupted and some destabilised so that the aim was to just basically raise the level of insurgency within Balochistan and the Karachi region.
Research and Analysis Wing through Mr Anil Kumar has been financing and sponsoring a lot of activities within Balochistan and Sindh. The entire Hundi and Hawala operations are undertaken from Delhi and Mumbai via Dubai into Pakistan and during one such important transaction was the $40,000 which was transferred to Baloch sub Nationals via Dubai. Also the finances which are coming into Balochistan and Sindh for various anti-national activities are coming through consulates in Jalalabad and Kandhar and the Consulate in Zahidan. These are very important consulates which are used by Research and Analysis Wing to transfer dollars into the Balochistan movement.
And one such instance was where I was directly involved and I was observing the transaction was when $40,000 were recently transferred from India via Dubai to one such Baloch national operative within Pakistan.
Research and Analysis Wing and Mr Anil Kumar on behalf of RAW had been sponsoring regularly the various terrorist activities within Pakistan. Especially Hazara Muslims, Shia Muslims who move around on pilgrimage between Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan were basically to be targeted and killed. They were already being done, it was being done but the level had to be raised to the very high level so that the movement completely stops.
Kulbhushan Jadhav, seen her making his second ‘confession’ in a video recorded in April 2017 by the Pakistani army and released by DG, ISPR on June 22, 2017
Then the targets on various workers of FWO who were conducting construction of various roads within Balochistan and the third major activity was the IED attacks which were being carried out by the Baloch sub nationals within Quetta, Turbat or various other cities of Balochistan. They were being directly sponsored by RAW.
Mr Anil Kumar has been sponsoring sectarian violence across Sindh and Balochistan and also sponsoring various assassinations across this same region so that instability or some kind of fear is set into the mindsets of the people of Pakistan, and in one such process SSP Chaudhary was assassinated. This was a direct mention by Mr Anil Kumar to me.
The various financing which subsequently happened for the TTP and various other Afghan anti Pakistani terrorist groups led to the attack by TTP on one of the Mehran Naval Bases in which a lot of damage was cost to the Pakistani Navy. Other sort of radar installation attack, the Sui pipeline gas attack, then attacks on civilian bus Stations where some I suppose Pakistani Nationals were being targeted by Sub-Nationals and murdered and massacred so that a sort of disruption in the CPEC is done that was being funded and directly supported by Mr Anil Kumar. He wanted it to be raised to the next level so that complete disruption and complete stoppage of the economic corridor between Gwadar and China is achieved.
One of the operations which was being planned by RAW officials along with Baloch insurgents was a military style attack on Zahedan Pakistani consulate. The aim was to either attack it with a grenade or some kind of RPG or IED attack or then try to harm the consulate General or some kind of vicious attack on the Pakistani consulate in Zahedan. It was being militarily planned, the RAW officials were involved in Iran and the Baloch Sub Nationals who were supposed to carry out the attack or facilitate the entire process were being involved and I was well aware of the plan which was being conducted and how it was being planned.
RAW was sponsoring the setting up of the modern website, a new website which was being already run through Nepal which the Balochistan movement was carrying on, on the Cyber world and the creation of the website, the previous maintenance of the already existing website was being handled by the Research and Analysis wing from Nepal, Kathmandu which was luring people from within Pakistan for various activities to be carried out in the future.
This time while crossing over into Pakistan I travelled all the way from Chahbahar in a private Taxi along with Rakesh to the Iranian Pakistan border near Sarawan. From wherein I crossed into Pakistan along with Baloch Sub Nationals and after about an hour or so I was apprehended by the Pakistani authorities in Pakistan.
Basically the movement into Pakistan for me was, I was on a visa and official visa in Iran and I was moving with my passports so I carried my passports with till the border almost so that if Iranian authorities or Iranian people who are about to check me or I am stopped or checked I should have a legitimate reason for movement within Iran and my subsequent movement into Pakistan and then backwards. While I was not intending to having being caught, so on my movement backwards again I would have had a legitimate reason to go about, with that passport with the legitimate visa of Iran.
During my judicial proceedings which were held under the field General court martial, I was accorded a defence counsel by the officials here which were conducting the entire proceedings.
Today I genuinely after the time having spent in Pakistan I feel very ashamed and I genuinely seek pardon of the acts and sins and crimes I have committed here against the Nation and the people of Pakistan.
