NEW DELHI, 19 March 2008 — India has pleaded with Pakistan to spare the life of Sarabjit Singh, who is on death row, and taken up the matter with Islamabad “at the highest level,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said in a reply to a letter from Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal.
Sarabjit is awaiting execution for his alleged role in the 1990 blasts in Lahore and Multan, which claimed 14 lives. He has been in jail for the past 17 years and is to be hanged April 1. Pakistan’s Supreme Court turned down a review petition against the death sentence in March 2006, following which a mercy petition was filed with President Pervez Musharraf. The president turned it down.
A Pakistani minister said yesterday that Musharraf should halt the execution. Caretaker Human Rights Minister Ansar Burney said he expected to receive a written appeal for clemency from Sarabjit’s family this week. He said he would forward it to Musharraf and urge him to commute Sarabjit’s sentence to life imprisonment. On March 3, Pakistan freed an Indian man on humanitarian grounds after he had spent 35 years in jail for espionage. Burney helped in the released of Kashmir Singh.
A week later India handed to Pakistan the body of Khalid Mahmood, a Pakistani who came to India to view a cricket match in 2005 and died in police custody on Feb. 12 this year. Khalid was arrested May 17, 2006 by police and charged with spying for Pakistan.
