Kulbhushan Jadhav case: Pakistan to file 2nd counter to India in ICJ today - and it's '400 pages long'

NEW DELHI: Pakistan is on tuesday set to file its second written reply to India's arguments in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case - and it's said to be 400 pages long, as reported by Pakistani media.
Pakistan's reply - a rejoinder to India's last reply on April 17 - has been prepared by a team of experts led by the country's attorney general Khalid Javed Khan, sources told The News International.
Jadhav is an Indian national on death row in Pakistan for alleged espionage and terror acts. The former Navy officer was tried by a military court and sentenced to death.

Jadhav wasn't allowed consular access through the entire period of his detention; he was allegedly arrested from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. And it's in connection with this violation of the Geneva Convention that India filed a case in the ICJ last year May 8. A 10-member bench of the ICJ on May 18 restrained Pakistan from executing Jadhav till the case was adjudicated on.
In an attempt to sway world opinion in its favour, Pakistan had last Christmas decided to allow Jadhav to meet his wife and mother, but the whole exercise made the country look worse than before as his kin faced harassment and ill-treatment. Jadhav, meanwhile, looked gaunt and ill. And to top it all, Pakistan's then foreign minister tried to spin the fact that India's deputy high commissioner would be at Jadhav's meeting, as "consular access" when it was anything but that. After India refuted this claim, Pakistan backtracked and admitted it wasn't consular access.

Tuesday's reply by Pakistan in the ICJ will be submitted by the country's foreign office India director Fareha Bugti, who is already the The Hague, reported Geo TV. Bugtis submitted Pakistan's counter-pleading in December last year as well.
In its written pleadings, India last September has accused Pakistan of violating the Vienna Convention by not giving consular access to Jadhav. India argued that the Convention didn't say such access would not be available to an individual arrested on charges of spying.
Pakistan in its December 13 reply to India in the ICJ said that the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations 1963 applied only to legitimate visitors and did not cover clandestine operations.
"Giving false identity to Kulbhushan, sending him for espionage and funding of terrorists' activities are all some of the reasons which disentitle India from invoking the jurisdiction of the ICJ," Pakistan had said.
India maintains that Jadhav had already retired from the Navy and was kidnapped from Iran where he had gone on business. It has also said that the trial of Jadhav by a military court in Pakistan was "farcical".