ISLAMABAD, Sept 6: Pakistan on Tuesday denied an Indian media report that it had assured New Delhi that it would not execute an Indian convicted 14 years ago of spying and of carrying out a series of bomb attacks.
“We have not given any such assurance,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Naeem Khan said, contradicting a report in the Indian daily, The Hindu.
Sarabjit Singh was convicted of spying and involvement in bombings in Pakistan that killed 14 people, and the Supreme Court last month upheld the death penalty handed to him in 1991.
Singh’s lawyer plans to ask Pakistan’s Supreme Court to review its decision and he also has the option of appealing to President Pervez Musharraf for clemency. The Hindu report said although Pakistan’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court verdict last month and ordered Singh’s hanging, the judgement is likely to be bypassed and clemency granted, it said.
It said Singh could either get a full pardon or the sentence could be commuted either through the personal intervention of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf or through a review petition in the Supreme Court.
Tuesday’s edition of The Hindu quoted unnamed Indian officials as saying India had been told the case had become an “emotive issue” and the sentence would not be implemented.
The Indian government has pressed for clemency for Singh ahead of talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan’s Musharraf in New York this month.—AFP
