Not that it matters ...
Pakistan charges two with Sarabjit
NEW DELHI: Pakistan has arrested and charged two prisoners with murder following the death of an Indian man jailed for espionage, officials said Thursday.
Two prisoners were taken into custody immediately after the attack and have now been charged with his murder, police official Tariq Mehmood told AFP.
“We have added a murder clause to the police complaint,” Tariq Mehmood, a police official at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat police station, told AFP.
The motive was unclear, but Pakistani police say an initial investigation pointed to an exchange of “hot words” with Singh.
The Indian man on death row died Thursday after being attacked by fellow inmates, drawing criticism from India’s premier who called for justice in the “barbaric” case.
Sarabjit Singh, who was sentenced 16 years ago over deadly bombings, died in the early hours of Thursday from injuries suffered in last week’s attack, a senior doctor at Jinnah hospital in the eastern city of Lahore told AFP.
“The criminals responsible for the barbaric and murderous attack on Sarabjit Singh must be brought to justice,” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on his official Twitter page.
India has complained that its diplomats were denied access to the prisoner as he fought for his life, and the premier said it was “particularly regrettable” that Pakistan had not responded to appeals “to take a humanitarian view of this case”.
The prime minister added that New Delhi would make the necessary arrangements to bring his body home for funeral rites, after earlier negotiations to treat the jailed spy in India or a third country failed.
Pakistan insists regular consular access was granted to Singh and said doctors did everything possible to save him before his death from cardiac arrest.
“The prisoner, who had been in a comatose state and on a ventilator for the last few days, was being provided the best treatment available and the medical staff at Jinnah Hospital had been working round the clock… to save his life,” the foreign ministry said.
The government provided “all assistance” to Singh’s family and the Indian authorities, and will facilitate “the early completion of all formalities” and hand over his body “at the earliest possible” time, it added in a statement.
Punjab Caretaker Chief Minister Najam Sethi also ordered a judicial inquiry into the murder.
Singh’s lawyer Owais Sheikh confirmed the 49-year-old’s death and said his body had been moved to the hospital mortuary. The doctor at Jinnah hospital said arrangements were under way for an autopsy.
Singh went into a coma after suffering multiple serious injuries when six prisoners attacked him on April 26 at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail, hitting him on the head with bricks and fracturing his skull.
“His condition was more than critical and he had (little) chance of survival,” Sheikh told AFP.
The lawyer has said his client received threats following the execution of a Kashmiri separatist in India. Mohammed Afzal Guru was hanged in New Delhi on February 9 for his part in an Islamist attack on India’s parliament in 2001.
Singh was convicted for his alleged involvement in a string of bomb attacks in Pakistan’s Punjab province that killed 14 people in 1990. His mercy petitions were rejected by the courts and former president Pervez Musharraf.
His family insisted he was merely a farmer who became a victim of mistaken identity after inadvertently straying across the border while drunk.
India’s foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin called for Pakistan to conduct an investigation into the prison attack.
“This was, put simply, the killing of our citizen while in the custody of Pakistan jail authorities,” he told India’s ANI news agency.
“The shocking attack highlights the need for concerted action by Pakistan to safeguard Indians in Pakistan prisons.”
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan also condemned the attack as a “dastardly act” and called on the government to conduct a thorough inquiry and punish those responsible.
“The authorities have obviously failed to do their elementary duty” of keeping him safe, the commission said in a statement.
Four members of Singh’s family – his wife, two daughters and his sister – who travelled to Lahore on Tuesday have since returned to India, according to the Press Trust of India (PTI).
A senior official in Delhi said earlier this week that diplomats from India’s High Commission in Islamabad were not allowed to visit Singh in hospital, and had also complained about a lack of information on his condition.
The Pakistani foreign ministry, however, insisted Indian diplomats in Lahore were given access to Singh on two occasions.
