Kulbhushan Jadhav’s mother and wife met him on Monday, nearly two years after the Pakistani army arrested the Indian national and sentenced him to death over allegations of spying. Pakistan’s foreign office tweeted an image of Jadhav’s mother and wife at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, saying: “We honour our commitments.”
Sarbjit’s sister says its all drama by Pak
Dalbir Kaur, the sister of Sarabjit Singh, who died in a Lahore jail in 2013, said Pakistan played a “cruel joke” by not allowing Kulbhushan Jadhav to meet his wife and mother freely and dubbed the entire exercise a “drama”.
It was the fist time Jadhav was meeting his family since his arrest in March last year, and Pakistan portrayed it as a humanitarian gesture to mark the birthday of the country’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah. But Kaur found no “humanism” in the meeting. “When it was held under such tight security and close relatives are separated by a glass screen, it has little meaning,” she said.
Having lost her brother four years back in Pakistan, Kaur said she could fully understand what Jadhav’s family must be going through at this hour.
“Jadhav or his family would know what they were going through by ‘meeting’ but in real sense not meeting at the same time. His family would have wanted to hug him, talk to him freely. But nothing of that sort happened. What solace would this meeting have provided them.”
The meeting that lasted for a mere 40 minutes can be viewed as an attempt by Islamabad to reach out to the Modi government, which has shown little interest in widening its engagement with the neighbour after the Pathankot and Uri terror strikes.