MOSCOW, Apr 29:
External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid today asked Pakistan to take “seriously” India’s appeal for the release of Indian death row convict Sarabjit Singh, comatose in a Lahore hospital after a brutal assault.
“We have been concerned of getting him (Sarabjit) back to India. We have been repeatedly pushing the matter. We have pulled out everything we know in diplomacy to reach out for this matter,” Khurshid said here.
Khurshid is in Russia to co-chair the inter-session meeting of the Indo-Russian Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC) with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.
Sharing the anguish of Singh’s family, Khurshid urged Pakistan to take “seriously” India’s appeal for the prisoner’s release.
Sarabjit, 49, sustained several injuries, including a skull fracture, when six prisoners attacked him in Kot Lakhpat Jail on Friday and doctors said his chances of survival were slim.
“In view of the recent tragic events and present circumstances, we once again appeal to the Government of Pakistan to take a sympathetic and humanitarian view of this case, and release Sarabjit Singh,” a Ministry of External Affairs statement said in New Delhi.
“Officials of the Indian High Commission are in touch with the medical authorities at Jinnah Hospital Lahore and we would like to consider the option of transferring Sarabjit Singh to India so that he can benefit from the best medical treatment available here,” the statement said.
It reiterated its demands that the attack on Sarabjit be thoroughly investigated to identify those who were responsible and to ensure that they are punished.
Ministry of External Affairs also noted that “it is the responsibility of the Government of Pakistan to ensure the safety and security of all Indian prisoners in their custody.”
On opposition criticism of the Government’s handling of Sarabjit’s case, Khurshid said, “this is too important a matter for us as a nation. For me it is like entertaining frivolous criticism. As a nation we need to speak in one voice and if there are any concrete suggestions to what we can do, we would be very happy to entertain it.”
In IslamabadIndian members of a bilateral judicial committee on prisoners have asked Pakistan to arrange a visit to the Lahore hospital where Indian death row prisoner Sarabjit Singh is being treated after a brutal assault.
Retired judges A S Gill and M A Khan arrived in Pakistan for a scheduled visit on Friday, hours after Sarabjit was attacked by other prisoners in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail.
They have asked Pakistan’s Foreign Office to allow them to visit Sarabjit in Jinnah Hospital, official sources told reporters.
The Indian judges flew into Karachi, where they met 482 Indian fishermen and six civilian prisoners being held in different jails in the southern port city.
Today, they met eight Indian civilian prisoners being held at Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi.
The judges travelled from Rawalpindi to Lahore this evening.
They are scheduled to meet some 30 Indian prisoners at Kot Lakhpat Jail at 11 am tomorrow.
The sources said the judges had had “good interactions” with the Indian prisoners in Karachi and Rawalpindi.
In Karachi, all the fishermen and civilian prisoners were presented before the judges, who questioned them about their problems and conditions within the jails.
In Rawalpindi too, the judges interacted with the prisoners.
The judges and officials accompanying them allowed the prisoners to call their relatives in India on mobile phones.
Pakistan today said that the “best possible care” is being given to Indian death row convict Sarabjit Singh – comatose in a Lahore hospital after a brutal assault – and that there are no plans to move him.
They dismissed a report that a medical board was considering a proposal to send Sarabjit abroad.
Sarabjit, 49, is being provided the best possible care in a Lahore hospital, and there are no plans to move him, Information Minister Arif Nizami said.
Nizami, a key member of the caretaker government, told PTI that Sarabjit “would continue” to be treated at Jinnah hospital in Lahore and there are no plans to move him.
“The best possible care is being provided to Sarabjit”, he said on the sidelines of an official event in Islamabad.
The caretaker govt has also taken steps to provide consular access to Sarabjit for Indian officials, he said.
Meanwhile, officials said the four-member medical board headed by Jinnah Hospital chief executive Mahmood Shaukat conducted a routine examination of Sarabjit this morning, officials said.
They rejected a media report that the board was mulling a proposal to send Sarabjit abroad for treatment.
“No such proposal has been under consideration,” an official of the Health Department of Punjab province told PTI.
“In fact, the medical board has no mandate (to decide about sending Sarabjit abroad),” said the official, who did not want to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.
The medical board is “minutely monitoring the patient” and Sarabjit is being given the “best treatment” at Jinnah Hospital, the official said.
Sources in the hospital told that there had been “no improvement whatsoever” in Sarabjit’s condition.
The members of the medical board – Shaukat, Postgraduate Medical Institute principal Anjum Habib Vohra, Jinnah Hospital Neuro Department head Zafar Chaudhry and King Edward Medical University neuro-physician Naeem Kasuri – see Sarabjit’s case as “major neurosurgical challenge”, the sources said.
Sarabjit sustained several injuries, including a skull fracture, when six prisoners attacked him in Kot Lakhpat Jail on Friday and doctors said his chances of survival are slim.
He was hit on the head with bricks and cut with sharp weapons. He is in a deep coma and on ventilator support in an intensive care unit of Jinnah Hospital.
He was convicted of alleged involvement in a string of bomb attacks in Punjab province that killed 14 people in 1990.
His mercy petitions were rejected by the courts and former President Pervez Musharraf.
The outgoing Pakistan People’s Party-led Government put off Sarabjit’s execution for an indefinite period in 2008.
Sarabjit’s family says he is the victim of mistaken identity and had inadvertently strayed across the border in an inebriated state. (PTI)
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