What can India do to save the eight former naval personnel sentenced to death in Qatar? The blunt answer is that while Delhi and Doha are on friendly terms and have strong trade ties, right now we don’t have any winning cards to play. We may have to rely on some energetic diplomacy to rescue the two ex-navy captains, five commanders and one sailor.

As a first move, diplomat Deepak Mittal, the former Indian ambassador to Qatar, is leading discussions with the tiny Gulf state to see if he can persuade the government there to lift the death sentences. Mittal was the Indian ambassador to Qatar, our biggest supplier of imported natural gas (LNG), until he was recalled in March.

Closer home, there are other indications the government is shifting gears to obtain the release of the eight men who were involved in training the Qatari navy at the time of their arrest in August 2022.

Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar on Monday morning met the families of the eight former officers who are now on death row and said he told them that the government “will continue to make all efforts to secure their release.” It was his first meeting with the families since the eight men were jailed.

Simultaneously, Naval Chief Admiral R. Hari Kumar told journalists on Monday that the government is waiting for the transcript of the court sentencing hearing and that: “Every effort is being made… to find relief for our personnel.”

The Qatari government has provided no details of the charges against the eight men – Captain Navtej Singh Gill, Captain Saurabh Vasisht, Commander Purnendu Tiwari, Captain Birendra Kumar Verma, Commander Sugunakar Pakala, Commander Sanjeev Gupta, Commander Amit Nagpal and Sailor Ragesh

The Financial Times, quoting an unnamed person it said was briefed on the case, reported that the men had been arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel on the Gulf peninsula’s submarine programme.

There has been no public comment from India either about the nature of the charges. Last December, Jaishankar told parliament that it was “a very sensitive case” and that the Indian government’s “effort is obviously to ensure that they (the former naval officers) are not treated unfairly.”

Understandably, the death sentences have come as a brutal and unexpected shock both to the families of the eight men and the government.

Now that the Court of First Instance has passed the sentence, the government is looking at how it can defend the men in a higher Qatari court and also whether the Qataris might be amenable to a mercy petition.

Appeals against decisions made by the Court of First Instance can be made to the Court of Appeals and as final resort the Court of Cessation. However, the grounds for appeal are limited to matters of law rather than facts. The Court of Appeals will only overturn a decision made by the Court of First Instance if it finds that there was an error in the application of the law.

The emir issues mercy petitions at key times of the year like Eid. (Eid-ul-Fitar falls next April) or Qatar’s National Day which falls on December 18. The older emir, the father of the current incumbent, is thought to be more pro-Indian. Qatar has rarely carried out the death penalty, according to The Financial Times, and the last execution it carried out was in 2020.

“This entire case has been shrouded in mystery. We cannot accept that Indian citizens can be sentenced to death – for what we don’t know. The entire trial was behind closed doors,” said Congress leader Shashi Tharoor.

There is also the option of exercising a memorandum of understanding on exchange of nationals who have been sentenced but that would presuppose commuting the death sentence to imprisonment.

India is expected to point out that Dahra Global Technologies and Consultancy Services, the Omani company for which our naval officers worked, was only involved in training and logistics for the Qatari Navy. As such, they were not involved in dealing with any top-secret information about weapons purchases.

Qatar has emerged as a key player in both Gulf and global politics in the last decade. Its gigantic wealth combined with adroit soft-power diplomacy and huge stocks of LNG – and a willingness to play all sides including Israel – has given it enormous clout with everyone from the US downwards.

In the last few days, Qatar has been playing a crucial and hectic go-between role in negotiations with the Palestinians and was able to get two Israeli hostages released. Many Hamas political leaders live in Qatar. The staggeringly cash-rich country is also said to have donated crucial funds to Hamas that have helped it to stay in power in Gaza.

Earlier, Qatar played a similar diplomatic role in the US-Taliban talks. Negotiations between the US and the Taliban took place in the Qatar capital, Doha. Certainly, it’s tough to overstate Qatar’s importance to the US. The state is the home to the largest US base in the Gulf. Even more crucially, Qatar and Iran are neighbours and this means the US base is next door to a country it’s at odds with.

India has many links with Qatar but they could be both strengths and weaknesses. The country with a tiny population of 1.5 million Qataris has around 700,000 Indians working there. At one level, the Indians ensure that the country keeps running. At another level, the Qataris occasionally threaten to expel them from the country.

Also, the high-flying Qatar Airways, which has built a globally recognised name for itself, depends heavily on passengers from India. One estimate is that Indians and People of Indian Origin account for about 30 per cent of its passengers. The Qataris have, in the past, demanded that India should declare an Open Skies policy for it and that it should be allowed to fly to cities of its choosing.

We, meanwhile, are heavily dependent on Qatari LNG and have been in talks to strike a new long-term LNG contract with Doha. We have built five LNG terminals and over 50 per cent of our LNG imports comes from Qatar. A government company, Petronet LNG, was formed for the import of LNG. Petronet is currently negotiating a fresh contract with Qatar. The Qataris are, of course big investors around the globe that have snapped up showpiece London mega-properties like the Shard, Canary Wharf and Harrods, the famously upmarket department store, and recently acquired Claridge’s Hotel. In India, by contrast they have relatively few investments, though one new move is a $1-billion investment in Reliance Retail.

Can the government get the naval officers home? It’s faced some roadblocks in mounting a full-fledged diplomatic effort. After Mittal returned to New Delhi, there was no ambassador in place for three months.

India and Qatar have expanded relations steadily in recent years. In 2008, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited the country. Seven years later in 2015, the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani came to India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned the visit in 2016. Foreign Minister Jaishankar has also visited Qatar three times.

In 2008, when Singh visited the country, India signed the India-Qatar Defence Cooperation Agreement which was extended for another five years in 2018. Indian Naval and Coastal Guard ships dock regularly in Qatar and the two countries have held joint naval exercises.

There was a hiccup in ties when Qatar, followed by other Gulf countries, demanded an apology from India after a couple of senior BJP members last year made derogatory comments about Islam but that furor calmed down when India said it had taken “strong action” against the members.

Everyone acknowledges the Qataris, with their gigantic wealth, can be prickly to negotiate with on bilateral matters. Hopefully, though, enough goodwill has been built up over official visits to win the accused men a reprieve. Also, the Qataris’ desire to be a reliable partner to all sides – fed by their own insecurities in the unstable region – may ultimately make them decide to defuse the situation and let the navy veterans go.