Pakistan is set to execute an Indian naval officer accused of being a spy, potentially ratcheting up tension between the two nuclear-armed states.
Kulbushan Sudhir Jadhav was sentenced to death after a military court found him guilty of planning, coordinating and organising espionage ‘aiming to destabilise and wage war against Pakistan’, a statement from the country said on Monday.
Jadhav, who also goes by the alias Hussein Mubarak Patel, was arrested in the southwestern province of Balochistan on March 3 last year and officials claimed that he later confessed to working for Indian intelligence.
But India has denied that he was a spy.
‘Today, (army chief) Gen Qamer Javed Bajwa has confirmed his death sentence,’ a Pakistan military statement said, without stating when the execution would take place.
There was no immediate comment from the Indian government.
The nuclear arch-rivals routinely accuse one another of sending spies into their countries, and it is not uncommon for either nation to expel diplomats accused of espionage, particularly at times of high tension.
However death sentences have rarely been issued in such cases in recent years.
In 2013 an Indian national on death row for spying in Pakistan was killed in jail after being attacked by fellow inmates. Sarabjit Singh had been on death row for 16 years.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but least developed province, has been battling a years-long separatist insurgency that the army has repeatedly characterised as ‘terrorism’ promoted by hostile states such as India.
Pakistan accuses India of helping the separatist movement in Baluchistan, a charge denied by India.
In its turn, the government in New Delhi says Pakistan aids separatist fighters in Kashmir, part of India’s only Muslim-majority state, which Pakistan also claims.
Last September, tension between the neighbours escalated after gunmen killed 19 Indian soldiers at an army camp in Kashmir, an attack India blamed on Pakistan-based militants.
Pakistan denies backing militants saying it only offers political support to the Muslim people of Indian-controlled Kashmir.
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