Article published in "The Week" , June 2017 Issue, Page-40

1. BY MAJOR
GENERAL (RETD)
NILENDRA KUMAR
THEWEEK •JUNE4,2017
GU EST COLUMN
Crude effort
to crucify
he facts disclosed by Pakistan in
the Kulbhushan Jadhav case make
its own story look absurd. After his
arrest on March 3, last year, Jadhav
was swiftly shifted to Islamabad for
interrogation. His video-taped confession was
shown at a press conference three weeks later.
The short time-span negates the feasibility of
any thorough probe, which would have
needed visits to distant sites, examination of
witnesses and corroboration oftestimony.
Pakistan further bungled the case by flouting
the1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations
to which India and Pakistan are signatories.
Under Article36 ofthe Convention, the Indian
High Commission in Islamabad should have
been informed of Jadhav's arrest and allowed
access to him. Pakistan's silence to this demand
from India fuels the suspicion that Jadhav had
been tortured.
The charges raised against him, such as pro-
viding financial backup, cannot be carried out
alone. Prosecution in such cases would always
be a joint trial of several accused. Strangely,
there is no indication here of any other person
having faced trial along with Jadhav, although
he was said to have trained an army of under-
cover agents.
The process laid down for the referral of a
case to a military tribunal itself is improper.
Army officers select the cases and send them to
the interior ministry for approval. The ministry
vets the list and sends it back to the command-
ers to convene a court. Even under Pakistani
law, two essential conditions must exist before
a case can be tried by a military court. One, the
accused must belong to an organisation that
uses the name of a religion or a sect. Two, he
must have carried out a violent act or illegally
crossed the national boundary for the said task.
Moreover, military law, as it has evolved over
decades, mandates a court-martial not to accept
a plea of guilty put forth by an accused where
the charge framed can involve death penalty.