India will go out of the way to ensure justice to Kulbhushan Jadhav: Sushma Swaraj

NEW DELHI: Members cutting across party lines joined hands in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday to hit out at Pakistan after a military court there awarded death sentence to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav.

Asserting that India will go “out of the way” to ensure justice to Jadhav who is an “innocent kidnapped Indian”, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj warned Islamabad of consequences on bilateral relations it proceeded on the matter.

“There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Jadhav. If anything, he is the victim of a plan that seeks to cast aspersions on India to deflect international attention from Pakistan’s well-known record of sponsoring and supporting terrorism... I would caution Pakistan’s government to consider the consequences on our bilateral relations if they proceed on this matter,” Swaraj said in a statement in the House.


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Swaraj also said if Pakistan carried out the death sentence, India would treat it as “an act of premediated murder”. “The government and the people of India would view very seriously the possibility that an innocent Indian citizen is facing the death sentence in Pakistan without the due process and in violation of basic norms of law, justice and international relations... Under these circumstances, we have no choice but to consider this sentence, if carried out, as an act of premeditated murder,” the minister said.

Swaraj later requested Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who readily agreed to do so, to draft a statement on the issue that Parliament adopted. Last year too, when Parliament was agitated over a terror strike from across the border, PM Modi had similarly urged Tharoor to draft a statement. She chided Pak for alleging he was an Indian spy by asking how a spy would be holding a valid Indian passport.