India on Monday appealed to the UN's top court to order Pakistan to suspend its planned execution of an Indian national convicted of spying, denouncing his court martial as "farcical." In an emergency hearing called just days after India lodged its case, lawyers for New Delhi urged the International Court of Justice to halt the death sentence imposed on Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav saying his rights had been violated by Islamabad. Jadhav was arrested in the restive southwestern province of Baluchistan in March 2016, where a separatist insurgency has raged for years. And Pakistani officials claim he has confessed to spying for Indian intelligence services. But India has denied he was a spy, saying his confession was forced from him, and last week lodged a rare protest at the ICJ in The Hague accusing Pakistan of "egregious violations of the Vienna convention." Pakistan was to present its arguments later Monday in the court housed in the history-filled halls of The Peace Palace, in a case which has highlighted the uptick in tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals. Deepak Mittal, one of the Indian legal team members, insisted Jadhav was "an innocent Indian national, who, incarcerated in Pakistan for more than a year on concocted charges, (has been) deprived of his rights and protection accorded under the Vienna Convention." Pakistan has failed to respond to all Indian demands for information about the case, snubbing requests for documents including the charge sheet, and has failed to provide Jadhav with consular access, he told the tribunal. Islamabad has also not responded to a visa application by Jadhav's parents seeking to travel to Pakistan to visit their son. Jadhav "has been denied the right to be defended by a legal counsel of his choice," Mittal said at the start of day-long hearing. "All that we know is what we have seen in the media in Pakistan," he added. "India believes that the farcical nature of the proceedings and unjust trial by a Pakistan military court... has led to a serious miscarriage of justice." India is seeking the immediate suspension of the death sentence against Jadhav who it claims was "kidnapped from Iran, where he was carrying on business after retiring from the Indian Navy," according to court documents. New Delhi ultimately wants the tribunal to order Islamabad to annul the sentence. It also wants the ICJ, set up in 1945 to rule on disputes between nations in accordance with international law, to declare that the Pakistani military court violated the Vienna Convention by imposing a death sentence on Jadhav and broke human rights laws. "The situation in which we find ourselves is grave and it is urgent," said another Indian lawyer, Harish Salve. "India has made innumerable requests since March 2016 for consular access." Nuclear archrivals India and Pakistan 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. But death sentences have rarely been issued in recent years. The case comes as relations have plummeted since a deadly attack on an Indian army base in the disputed region of Kashmir in September, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Islamist group Jaish-e-Mohammed. Since the incident there have since been repeated outbreaks of cross-border firing, with both sides reporting deaths and injuries. — Agencies
