Home Minister Rajnath Singh said India will go to any extent to save Kulbhushan Jadhav.
“We will go to whatever extent we need to, but we will save Kulbhushan Jadav,” the minister said, while attending an event in Mumbai.
The minister maintained that Kulbhushan Jadhav was not a spy, but a businessman who happens to be an ex-navy official.
He said Jadhav was conducting business in Iran and often traveled between Tehran and the location of his business inside Iran.
“After he was kidnapped, the Pakistani authorities held a press conference in which they said they found a valid Indian passport from Jadhav. If he was really a spy, would he have kept a valid Indian passport with him,” Singh said.
Singh also said India tried to have access to the prisoner 13 times, but Pakistan refused to allow it to access Jadhav.
He said the principles of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations laid down certain rules that should be adhered to in such cases, and “if necessary”, India will raise the matter in international forums.
India typically shies away from involving third parties in its territorial dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir — the core bone of contention between the two nuclear armed neighbors.
Pakistan, on the other hand, is eager to involve third parties to get India to cede parts of its territory with sizable Muslim populations to itself. Pakistan was carved out of India seventy years ago on the basis of the argument that Muslims will not be able to live peacefully with Hindus as a single country.