India on Thursday hit back at Pakistan after it released another propaganda video of former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav in which he is heard saying that an Indian diplomat yelled at his mother when she and his wife visited Islamabad to meet him on 25 December.

Reacting to the new video put, an External Affairs Ministry spokesperson said,”this does not come as a surprise to us. Pakistan is simply continuing its practice of putting out coerced statements on video.”

The spokesperson said it was time for Pakistani to realise that such propagandistic exercises simply did not carry credibility. ”The absurdity of a captive under duress certifying his own welfare while mouthing allegations of his captors clearly merits no comment.”

He said Pakistan would be best advised to fulfil its international obligations, whether pertaining to consular relations or UNSC resolutions 1267 and 1473 on terrorism and to desist from continuing violations of human rights of an Indian national.

Pakistan had allowed Jadhav’s mother and wife to meet him on the Christman day and tweeted photos of the 45-minute meeting as part of fresh propaganda ahead of the hearing of India’s appeal against Jadhav’s death sentence at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

In the new video, reportedly played out by Pakistan’s foreign office at a press briefing, Jadhav is heard saying, “I saw fear in the eyes of my mother and wife. Why should there be fear? Whatever has happened has happened. They felt threatened. The Indian diplomat who had come along with my mother was shouting the moment she stepped out. I saw him shouting, yelling at her. This [meeting] was a positive gesture, so that she (my mother) could be happy and I could be happy”.

The Indian prisoner, who is on death row in the neighbouring country on charges of espionage, also claimed that he has not been tortured in custody.

During their meeting with Jadhav at the foreign office in Islamabad, his mother and wife communicated with him via an intercom and across a glass screen, while Pakistani officials and Indian Deputy High Commissioner J P Singh monitored the meeting through another glass screen looking into the room.

Indian officials in New Delhi are also raising question on how Jadhav could see anything that happened once his mother and wife had stepped had out of the room where the meeting took place.
The officials said the video clearly suggested that Pakistan was under pressure since it could not answer India’s charges over the manner in which the meeting was conducted.

”Pakistan wants to change the narrative through the latest video,” they added.

Pakistani might also be seeking to shift the focus from the intense heat it was facing from the US for its duplicity in dealing with terrorism.