ISLAMABAD: The condition of Sanaullah Haq, a Pakistani prisoner injured in an attack by an inmate at central Jammu jail in Indian-administered Kashmir, remains “very critical”, the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi said Saturday.

“Sanaullah’s condition remains very critical. He is on life support system in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) on ventilator. Given the severity of head injuries, his prognosis remained grim,” said a statement by the Pakistani High Commission.

Sanaullah had suffered multiple injuries to the head, and was airlifted on Friday to a government hospital in the city of Chandigarh, 250 kilometres north of New Delhi.

A spokeswoman for the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research Hospital in Chandigarh said Sanaullah was in the intensive care unit and on a ventilator as his condition “continues to remain critical”.

The Pakistani High Commission officials “came to the hospital and we have given them his medical update”, added Manju Wadwalkar, the spokeswoman of the PGIMER Hospital.

Haq was said to have entered a state of coma after the apparent tit-for-tat attack after convicted Indian spy Sarabjit Singh died after being bludgeoned with a brick by fellow inmates at a Pakistani prison.

Sanaullah, who hails from the city of Sialkot, was attacked by a prisoner who was identified as a former Indian army soldier nearly 24 hours after Singh’s death in Lahore.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry had termed the jail attack on Sanaullah an “obvious retaliation” for the killing of Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh.

Singh died on Thursday in Pakistan and was cremated with state honours on Friday in his native village in northwestern India.

Singh had been on death row after being convicted by a Pakistani court 16 years earlier for espionage and for involvement in a string of bomb attacks in Pakistan that killed 14 people in 1990.