Sarabjit issue under active consideration: Pak

Pakistan Govt, which had earlier postponed April 1 hanging of Sarabjit for 30 days, has also allowed his family to visit him.

Pakistan government said it was ‘actively considering’ a request from India for clemency to death row prisoner Sarabjit Singh and a decision will be taken in ‘due course’.

Asked if the Indian national, who was sentenced to death for alleged involvement in the 1990 blasts in Punjab province, would be hanged, Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Sadiq said, “the issue of Sarabjit Singh is under active consideration by the Pakistan government.”

“We have received a request from the Indian government. A decision will be taken in due course,” he said, but did not provide details.

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His comments follow Pakistan President’s office statement that no mercy petition for the condemned Indian national was pending with it.

President Pervez Musharraf’s spokesman Maj Gen (retired) Rashid Qureshi said a mercy petition received by the presidency some time ago from Sarabjit’s family had been forwarded to Interior Ministry, which will have to consider it and pass on the recommendations to the Prime Minister’s secretariat.

“The President acts only on the recommendations of the Prime Minister,” Qureshi said.

Pakistan government, which had earlier postponed the April one hanging of Sarabjit for 30 days, has also allowed his family to visit him in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail.

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“The Home Department of Punjab province has given us permission to go and meet Sarabjit and we will shortly be leaving for Lahore,” the Indian prisoner’s sister Dalbir Kaur said.

Sarabjit’s wife Sukhpreet Kaur and his daughters Swapandeep and Poonam along with his sister and her husband Baldev Singh had arrived in Pakistan on Wednesday.