Lahore: Pakistani authorities on Thursady ordered a judicial inquiry into the murder of Indian death row convict Sarabjit Singh, who died after being comatose for nearly a week following an assault by other inmates of Kot Lakhpat Jail.
Najam Sethi, the caretaker Chief Minister of Punjab province, ordered the judicial inquiry.
He directed officials to ensure that the probe was completed in 15 days. “Chief Minister Najam Sethi has directed the Home Department to prepare terms of reference for a judicial inquiry into the murder of Sarabjit Singh. The inquiry would be completed within 15 days,” a Punjab government spokesman told PTI.
The inquiry will be conducted by a High Court judge, state-run Radio Pakistan reported.
Sethi also directed authorities to beef up security for all foreign prisoners in jails across Punjab province, the spokesman said.
The Punjab government has formed an eight-member medical board headed by Umer Farooq Baloch to conduct an autopsy on Sarabjit’s body.
The autopsy is expected to take two hours, said a doctor at Jinnah Hospital, where Sarabjit was being treated. Sarabjit, 49, died at Jinnah Hospital at about 1 a.m. local time, officials said.
Police today added murder charges to an FIR registered against two death row prisoners – Amer Aftab and Mudassar – booked for attacking him.
No action has been taken so far against officials of the jail for failing to provide adequate security to Sarabjit.
Sarabjit was convicted of alleged involvement in a string of bomb attacks in Punjab province that killed 14 people in 1990 and spent about 22 years in Pakistani prisons.
His mercy petitions were rejected by the courts and former President Pervez Musharraf.
The previous Pakistan People’s Party-led government put off Sarabjit’s execution for an indefinite period in 2008.
Sarabjit’s family says he was the victim of mistaken identity and had mistakenly strayed across the border in an inebriated state.
Sarabjit’s wife Sukhpreet Kaur, daughters Poonam and Swapandeep Kaur and sister Dalbir Kaur, who went to Lahore Tuesday to see him, have returned to India.
Singh’s family says he was totally innocent and never involved in any crime. He had only inadvertently strayed across the border.
Sarabjit second Indian to die in Pak’s Kot Lakhpat jail :Sarabjit Singh became the second Indian prisoner this year to die in Pakistan’s notorious Kot Lakhpat jail here.
In January, another Indian prisoner Chamel Singh had died in the same jail under suspicious circumstances.
Chamel, said to be in his sixties, was declared dead on arrival by doctors at the same state-run hospital where Sarabjit died.
He was serving a five-year prison term for alleged involvement in espionage. Pakistani media at that time reported that the preliminary post-mortem report indicated torture inflicted on Chamel, a charge denied by the jail authorities.
The Kot Lakhpat jail houses more than four times the 4,000 prisoner capacity it was built for.
Currently it has about 17,000 prisoners out of which at least 36 are Indian nationals.
The Indian prisoners were last week interviewed by Indian members of an Indo-Pak judicial committee during a visit. Some prisoners complained that they were provided “virtually no security” before the attack on Sarabjit.
According to reports, the prisoners said that after the attack on Sarabjit, the jail staff have become active and does not allow other inmates to get close to them during breaks. The committee earlier visited Karachi and Rawalpindi and met Indian prisoners being held in jails in those cities. (Agencies)