India's Ex-Intelligence Officers Blame KulbhushanJadhavfor Getting Caught in Pakistan
By RiazHaq
CA
India's former RAW officers, including one ex chief, have blamed Indian spy KulbhushanJadhav, arrested by Pakistan in 2016, for getting caught in Pakistan as a "result of unprofessionalism", according to a report in India's "The Quint" owned and operated by a joint venture of Bloomberg News and Quintillion Media.
The report that appeared briefly on The Quint website has since been removed under pressure from the Indian government.
The story quotes a former RAW chief as saying that the “proposal to recruit Jadhav for operations, whatever it’s worth, was ridiculous.” However, the report said that "(Jadhav's) recruitment was approved by a joint secretary as the supervisory officer. The RAW has a special unit which also undertakes parallel operations in certain crucial target countries for which it seeks out its own recruits".
Several experienced RAW hands told the Quint that the usual practice is to “have a Baloch or a Pakistani national” do the “intelligence gathering job for us", adding that it was “foolish to set an Indian the task to obtain intelligence from a country as hostile as Pakistan.”
This is only the second story in the Indian media to acknowledge the status as a covert RAW operative in Balochistan.
Karan Thapar's Questions
An earlier story by Indian journalist Karan Thapar pointed out several flaws in the Indian narrative claiming that Jadhav was an innocent Indian businessman kidnapped from Chabahar by Pakistani agents.
Writing for the Indian Express, Thapar debunked the entire official story from New Delhi by raising the following probing questions:
1. Jadhav's Two Passports
Thapar asks why does Jadhav have two passports, one in his own name and another in the name of Hussein Mubarak Patel?
According to The Indian Express, the second passport was originally issued in 2003 and renewed in 2014. The passport numbers are E6934766 and L9630722. When asked, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson would only say that India needs access to Jadhav before he could answer. But why not check the records attached to the passport numbers? Surely, they would tell a story.
Additionally, The Times of India claims that since 2007, Jadhav has rented a Bombay flat owned by his mother, Avanti, in the name of Hussein Mubarak Patel. Why would he use an alias to rent his own mother’s flat? Perhaps Jadhav changed his name after converting to Islam? But then, why did he deliberately retain a valid passport in his old name? Indeed, why did the government let him, unless he deceived them?
2. Abduction From Iran
If Pakistan did abduct Jadhav, don’t we need to ask why, asks Thapar? Doesn’t that raise the question of what was so special about him that made them do this? After all, there are 4,000 Indians in Chabahar, Iran — and no one else has been abducted.
If Jadhav was indeed abducted from the Iranian soil, then why did India not pursue the matter with Iran, but, as the Indian foreign ministry spokesperson admitted, they don’t seem to have responded or, perhaps, even conducted an investigation yet. India seems to have accepted that. Odd, wouldn’t you say, asks Thapar?
3. Timing of Jadhav's Arrest
Both The Indian Express and Asian Age suggest that Jadhav has links with the Pakistani drug baron Uzair Baloch who's also accused of terror in Pakistan. Did Jadhav play dirty with him and get caught in a revenge trap set by the drug mafia? Given that Jadhav was arrested a month after Baloch was taken into custody by Pakistan, this could be part of the explanation?
4. Jadhav's Pursuit of RAW Employment
The Indian Express has reported that between 2010 and 2012, Jadhav made three separate attempts to join the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). The paper suggests he also tried to join the Technical Services Division. What more do we know about this? Even if the media doesn’t, surely the government does? A. S. Dulat, a distinguished former chief of RAW, has unhesitatingly said Jadhav could be a spy. As he put it, if he (Dulat) was in the government, he would hardly admit it.
The Quint story and Karan Thapar's article dismantle the false narrative that the Indian and Western media have been pushing since KulbhushanJadhav's arrest in Balochistan in March, 2016. These reports are beginning to essentially confirm that Jadhav's confession of orchestrating murderous attacks in Pakistan is factual.
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