Purnendu Tiwari, still held in Qatar after sentence commutation, says India
A former Indian Navy official, whose death sentence was commuted by a Qatari court in 2023 along with seven others, has been unable to return to India due to detention in a separate case, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Friday.
Purnendu Tiwari was among eight former Navy personnel arrested by Qatari authorities on espionage charges in 2022. While all other personnel returned to India following a Qatari court’s decision to commute the sentences, Tiwari remains in Qatar.
“The eighth naval veteran, he has a particular case against him. He was detained in that case. It has nothing to do with the earlier case,” MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said at his weekly media briefing.
“The court there has given a ruling under which he has been given a sentence. We are in touch with him, with his family, and his lawyers. So, that is where this particular issue is,” he said.
It is learnt that Tiwari was accused of financial irregularities related to his former employer.
Jaiswal’s comments in response to a question came after Tiwari’s sister, Meetu Bhargava, in a social media post, said the government failed to secure his return to the country.
“Commander Tiwary has endured nearly four years of extreme hardship in Doha and has now been languishing in jail for almost five months. He is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) along with other serious medical conditions. His health is deteriorating rapidly,” she said.
“What is even more alarming is that the cases against him were stitched out of the very same case for which he had already been pardoned by (the Qatari Amir), despite having no role in the company’s financial matters,” she added.
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