India has asked Pakistan to give unconditional access to Kulbhushan Jadhav

India has asked Pakistan to give unconditional access to Kulbhushan Jadhav, reports ANI. Earlier Pakistan had claimed that he had refused to file a review plea while India said that he had been coerced into doing that.

In July 2019, the International Court of Justice ruling in favour of India, had directed Pakistan to review Jadhav's death sentence and keep it suspended meanwhile. The ICJ had also agreed that Pakistan had violated the Vienna convention by denying Jadhav consular access after convicting in a "farcical" closed trial.

An NDTV report said, Pakistan's Attorney General Ahmed Irfan said in a media conference on Wednesday that Kulbhushan Jadhav was invited to file a review petition on June 17, but he "preferred to follow up on his pending mercy petition," and added that Pakistan has offered him a second consular access.

"Jadhav has been sentenced to execution through a farcical trial. He remains under custody of Pakistan’s military. He has clearly been coerced to refuse to file a review in his case," the MEA said.

"In a brazen attempt to scuttle even the inadequate remedy under the Ordinance, Pakistan has obviously coerced Shri Jadhav to forego his rights to seek an implementation of the judgment of the ICJ," the ministry said.

On 20 May 2020 Pakistan passed an Ordinance to allow for the High Court to review the sentence awarded by their military court, the MEA said.

"Pakistan has all along maintained that their laws allowed for effective review and reconsideration while we have protested it all along. Now, after almost a year, they have made a u-turn and issued an Ordinance to ostensibly provide for some sort of review," a spokesperson of the ministry said.