In her report to the Parliament, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj addressed Pakistan's humiliating treatment of Kulbhushan Jadhav's wife and mother. Calling it hostile, she said, “Pakistan made Kulbhushan Jadhav's wife and mother appear as widows to him, by forcing them to take off their mangalsutra, bindi and bangles.” She said it was done deliberately and was part of the condemnable intimidation of the women by the neighbouring country.
Swaraj informed the Rajya Sabha that she spoke with Jadhav's mother Avanti who explained how they made her remove her “symbols of marriage”. She detailed the hours of threat and humiliation they underwent, choking back tears. Jadhav is an Indian national, currently on a death row in Pakistan for alleged espionage, after he was caught in Balochistan. “I begged them saying I've never taken off mangalsutra ever, but they said I have to. The first thing Kulbhushan said to me, when I went in to meet him is 'How is Baba', because he thought something had happened when he saw me without mangalsutra, bindi and bangles,” said Avanti to Swaraj.
Explaining to the House, Swaraj said, “A meeting of a mother with her son and a wife with her husband was turned into a propaganda tool by Pakistan. She (Avanti) wears only saree and she was forced to wear salwar kurta, this was insulting.” The minister added, “The meeting was started in absence of the Deputy High Commissioner, if he would have seen how clothes of the family members were changed, he would have registered protest there and then.”
Both the ladies went through unbearable pain as they talked with Jadhav in a restrained atmosphere. They were not allowed to speak in Marathi, their mother tongue, and Jadhav, spoke in what seemed like a rehearsed speech, refraining from answering any questions asked by his mother or wife. Media reports said he “greeted the two women by acknowledging that he was, as alleged by Pakistan and contested by India, indeed an Indian spy and had engineered a spate of terror attacks.” One report also said that his mother stopped him from admitting the crimes.
The 40-minute meeting across a glass screen, through an intercom, tightly controlled by Pakistani officials has left the women drained. Swaraj addressed the confiscation of Jadhav's wife Chetnakul's footwear as Pak officials said “there was something in it”. “She went on two international flights wearing the footwear, none of them found a recorder or a camera like Pakistan is alleging at different times. How is it possible that airlines' extensive safety checks didn't find these things?”
“Now they're spreading such lies, like we knew they would, like we suspected they would when they confiscated the shoes. This is an absurdity beyond measure. If for security reasons she was made to take off shoes, they should have returned them when she was leaving but no, they had to commit some sort of cruelty.”
