A Qatar Court on Thursday commuted the death sentence given to eight former Indian Navy personnel earlier this year and sentenced them to prison for varying durations ranging from three years to 25 years, reports said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ruling by the Court came during the hearing of an appeal by the families of the eight men, who were arrested in August 2022 on undeclared charges. Reportedly, eight former Indian Navy personnel were accused of espionage, though Qatari and Indian authorities haven\u2019t provided details of the charges against them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Ministry of External Affairs in a statement mentioned that the Qatar\u2019s Court of Appeal had reduced the sentences given to the eight men namely Captains Navtej Gill and Saurah Vasisht, Commanders Purnendu Tiwari, Amit Nagpal, SK Gupta, BK Verma and Sugunakar Pakala and sailor Ragesh, but provided no details. The statement added that the detailed judgement is awaited. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reports stated that the Qatari court had commuted the death sentence of all eight men and given them prison terms of varying duration. Furthermore, the death sentence is off the table and the prison terms vary from a few years to several years. The prison terms range from three years to 10, 15 and 25 years, as per reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Notably, the commutation of the death sentence makes it possible for India to invoke a 2015 agreement with Qatar on the transfer of sentenced persons. The agreement allows citizens of India and Qatar who have been convicted and sentenced for criminal offences to serve their sentences in their home country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The agreement was reportedly signed during a visit to India by the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, in March 2015 and is not applicable to persons sentenced to death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Ministry of External Affairs said that the Indian side is in close touch with the legal team and the families of the eight men to decide on the next steps. On Thursday, the Indian ambassador to Qatar and other officials were present in the Court of Appeal with family members when the verdict was delivered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier on October 26, the eight former navy personnel, including decorated officers who commanded frontline warship in the Indian Navy, were sentenced to death by a Qatar\u2019s Court after being detained for more than a year. The external affairs ministry had expressed deep shock at the verdict and pledged to look at all legal options to help the former naval personnel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Ministry of External Affairs in a statement mentioned that the Qatar\u2019s Court of Appeal had reduced the sentences given to the eight men<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":497456,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497,125714],"tags":[3305,1224,161493],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2023\/12\/29123655\/images-92-1.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497454"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497454"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=497454"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=497454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}