ISLAMABAD, Aug 23: Pakistan on Tuesday received and is assessing a request from India for consular access to an Indian national sentenced to death for spying, a foreign ministry spokesman said.
Spokesman Mohammad Naeem Khan said the request for access to convict Sarabjit Singh was made in a diplomatic note received from the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.
“We are assessing the request,” Mr Khan told Dawn when asked to comment on his Indian counterpart’s statement in New Delhi earlier in the day that the Indian High Commission had approached Islamabad about the man whose family members have threatened suicides if he is hanged.
India’s move followed a meeting its External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh had in New Delhi on Tuesday with a delegation including the convict’s sister and some parliament members from the eastern Punjab.
Sarabjit Singh, alias Manjit Singh, was sentenced to death by an Anti-Terrorism Court of the Punjab on charges of carrying out deadly bomb blasts in the province as an agent of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the external intelligence agency. The sentence was upheld by the Lahore High Court and finally confirmed by the Supreme Court on Aug 18.
An Indian television channel on Monday quoted some family members of Singh as pleading for his life, proclaiming him innocent and saying they would commit suicide if he was hanged.
The convict’s sister Dalbir Kaur was quoted as saying the family had written to President Pervez Musharraf and Indian President Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking them to intervene.
While Ms Kaur said her brother was mistaken for a RAW agent after he had strayed into Pakistan in August 1990, the Indian government has not yet confirmed his identity. “Confirmation of identity always follows consular access,” the Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman said at a news briefing in New Delhi on Tuesday.
“That is the first step to finding out who the person is,” the spokesman said, according to a transcript of his remarks released by the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.
Pakistani officials say the convict had confessed his involvement in the blasts and that he had been changing his names to hide is identity.
