The Jadhav affair

• Contradictory stands

By voluntarily acceding to the request of Jadhav’s wife and mother for access to the Indian spy Pakistan took the moral high ground. Disputes with India apart, the wish of a man condemned to death to meet his family deserved humanitarian consideration. But was the permission simply inspired by humanitarianism? It appears that in the foreign ministry one man does not know what the other is saying.

A day earlier both Kh Asif and Musadik Malik, adviser to prime minster, told media that Pakistan had agreed to give consular access to Jadhav. The foreign minister clearly told in a TV interview this was being done in view of an advice received vis-a-vis the ongoing case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The FO spokesman on the other hand denied the visit had anything to do with consular access. Indian High Commissioner was only present outside the meeting room and did not hear the conversation that took place between the family members. Similarly the access provided to Jadhav had no connection whatsoever with the case pending before the ICJ or with politics. The meeting was purely a humanitarian gesture on the birthday of the Father of the Nation. Enigmatically, it was maintained that this was not the Indian spy’s last meeting.

Not long ago there was a prolonged condemnation drive against former PM Nawaz Sharif for not exposing Jadhav, the face of Indian terrorism in Pakistan, by name. Suddenly those dealing with the case seem to have developed a softer approach. The FO says it offered Jadhav’s wife and mother to speak to media which the Indian government did not accept. Kh Asif did not rule out security and national interests determining the outcome of Jhadav’s mercy appeal rather than the acts he had committed. One fails to decipher the moralistic rationale behind the gesture put forth by FO spokesman “One good deed should beget another, and such a decision should serve as a template for others to follow, including in Indian Occupied Kashmir, where innocent blood continues to be spilled.” Diplomacy seems to be encompassing new realms unknown to Henry Kissinger!