It's a story shrouded in utmost mystery. A Qatar court on Thursday announced death penalty for eight retired Indian Navy personnel arrested last year.
In August 30 last year, Qatar’s intelligence agency picked up the men from their homes in the dead of night. They were working for a defence services provider company, Dahra Global Technologies, in Qatar. Since then, they have been kept in solitary confinement, denied bail, and now sentenced to death. All along, the Qatari authorities did not specify the reason for the detention to the families of the eight men. Dahra Global Technologies was involved in the training of Qatari navy.
The arrest of the veterans, all working for Dahra Global Technologies, first came to light with the tweet of the sister of a former commander who was also the managing director at the firm and has been in Doha since 2013, training Qatar’s navy personnel. In November last year, Meetu Bhargava, sister of retired commander Punendu Tiwari, sought help from the government to bring her brother back. "I made a tweet on October 25 and appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to bring back my brother who is in illegal detention in Doha, Qatar. My brother is a retired navy officer and he went there to provide training to Qatari Navy through his company Dahra Global Consultancy Services," she had told ANI.
In 2019, Tiwari was awarded the coveted Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, the highest honour conferred on overseas Indians by the Indian government, on the recommendation of the Qatari government.
Another family member discovered something was amiss when his brother, one of the arrested men, did not respond to a message greeting him on his birthday, as per a TOI story. While consular access was provided to the arrested men, the Qatari authorities never publically revealed why the officers were picked up or what charges they were being held for.
The charges against the men were not formally made public but various reports claimed they were accused of spying for Israel. It was also being speculated that their detention might have something to do with the firm’s rivalry with another firm.
Dahra Global Technologies, which employed the eight Indians, was owned by a Qatari national who too was arrested but was later released on bail, according to media reports. There was speculation in media that Qatar claimed to have intercepted electronic communication which revealed that the arrested men spied on behalf of Israel on Qatari navy's secret project of Italian midget submarines that could evade radar detection.
In December last year, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that the Indian side was constantly in touch with the government of Qatar, as he assured the arrested Indians were a priority for the country, ANI had reported.
"This is a very sensitive case. Their interests are foremost in our minds. Ambassadors and senior officials are in constant touch with Qatar's government. We assure, they're our priority," the EAM said during his address to the Rajya Sabha.
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