After denying repeated requests from New Delhi, for consular access to detained Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, Islamabad said on Friday that it has informed the Indian High Commission here that it would allow him to meet his wife.
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"A note verbale to this effect has been sent to the Indian high commission in Islamabad, today," Dr Mohammad Faisal, Pakistan foreign office spokesperson, said. "The government of Pakistan has decided to arrange a meeting of Jhadav with his wife in Pakistan, purely on humanitarian grounds," Faisal added.
A note verbale is a piece of diplomatic correspondence prepared in the third person and is unsigned, which is to say it's a less formal note.
The move comes days after Pakistan's foreign minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif welcomed a US offer of mediation in easing tensions with India. It's believed that the two countries had discussed the issue last month in a meeting between foreign minister Sushma Swaraj and the newly appointed Pakistani high commissioner to New Delhi, Sohail Mahmood.
Jadhav, according to Pakistan, was arrested on March 3, 2016, in Balochistan's Mashkhel area, a claim rejected by India. New Delhi said Jadhav was a retired Indian Navy official and was abducted from Iran.
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A secret Pakistan military court, which tried Jadhav on charges of espionage and subversive activities in Pakistan, sentence him to death this year in April. However, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stopped Pakistan from carrying out the punishment on May 18. Pakistan has turned numerous Indian requests seeking consular access to Jadhav.
A day earlier, attorney general for Pakistan, Ashtar Ausaf Ali, gave an in-camera briefing to the senate, the upper house of parliament, over Jadhav's case pending before the ICJ. On October 11, Pakistan had designated former Chief Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani to the ICJ to be its Judge in Jadhav's case.
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