LAHORE, Oct 6: Federal Law Minister Farooq H Naek said on Monday that only the president could decide the fate of Indian convict Sarabjit Singh.

“I met Singh on the direction of President Asif Ali Zardari to collect the file of his case for study, and the file will be later submitted to the president for consideration,” the minister told reporters after visiting Singh and other prisoners at the Kot Lakhpat Jail.

He said any decision taken by the president about Singh would be in line with Pakistan’s Constitution.

Naek said it was ‘premature’ to say that Singh’s death sentence would be commuted to life term or he would be released. He said proposals were under consideration to convert the non-bailable arrest of under-trail prisoners into the bailable one, release convicts facing sentence up to five years and increase their fine after making necessary amendments to the law. The minister said the government would introduce jail reforms, including elimination of overcrowding and construction of public call offices. He said jails would have call tracing facility so that officials could monitor information exchanged by prisoners. He said 90,000 prisoners were being kept in jails across Pakistan against a capacity of 40,000. He said complaint cells would be set up at jails under retired judges of the Supreme Court or high courts.

Later, the minister visited the cells of the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and President Zardari and decided to seal those. He also visited Camp Jail.

terror policy: ARD Secretary-General Qazi Abdul Qadeer Khamosh has stressed the need for immediate review of Pervez Musharraf’s policies to control terrorism.

Speaking at a reception hosted by Jamhoori Wattan Party divisional secretary Sahibzada Khalilur Rahman Zaheer here on Monday, he said terrorism could not be controlled by continuing the policies of the former president but the present rulers were continuing the policies despite the fact that they considered Musharraf an unconstitutional head of state.

The policy of justifying the US attacks in tribal areas was also shameful.

He said the democratic government should evolve a new policy for countering terrorism in accordance with the aspirations of the people because the menace could not be controlled by continuing the policy of the former dictatorial regime. He also condemned victimisation of political workers in Gujrat.