Kulbhushan Jadhav Offered To Work For R&AW As Intelligence Operative, Was Turned Down: Media Report

Kulbhushan Jadhav, the former Indian Navy officer, who was handed a death sentence by a military court in Pakistan over the false charges of spying, had offered to work as an intelligence operatives for the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) several times between 2010 and 2012, Praveen Swami of the Indian Express has reported. Jadhav had offered to use his dhow, the Kaminda, to gather intelligence, but the intelligence agency rejected all his offers, the report says.

In the first offer made by Jadhav in 2010, he extended a proposal to gather intelligence around Pakistan’s strategically located Gwadar port. The offer received a polite but sceptical hearing by R&AW’s Pakistan Desk, one that handles all operations related to the country. According to the report, the intelligence agency was not interested in Jadhav’s offer and it was rejected.

These offers were made after Jadhav’s plan of running a successful post-retirement business in Iran’s Chabahar free-trade zone failed due to economic sanctions imposed by the United States on Tehran, the report states.

“He was in fairly tight financial circumstances when he contacted R&AW through common contacts in the Navy around 2010”, the Indian Express report quotes an officer, then serving on the organisation’s Pakistan desk, as saying.

Jadhav made another attempt in 2013, only to be rejected again. In a video released by the Pakistan Army’s Inter-Services Public Relations in 2016, soon after it claimed to have arrested Jadhav, the former navy officer named his handler in India. According to the daily’s report, there is no officer, serving or retired, bearing the name Jadhav cited. He had never met National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, the report states, contradicting the claim made in the videotape.