Indian ‘spy’ to seek clemency, again

An Indian prisoner in Pakistan, Sarabjit Singh, will move the Supreme Court of Pakistan to reopen the case after new facts emerged, his lawyer said on Tuesday.
Singh was sentenced to death in 1991 for spying and bombing that killed 14 people but his family said he was innocent and had crossed the border into Pakistan accidentally in 1990 while he was drunk.
Awais Ahmad Sheikh, counsel for the convict, said the real culprit for the bombing was a person called Manjeet Singh who had been arrested by the Indian authorities after he petitioned them with evidence.
“I gathered all the evidences and showed it to the Indian authorities that he (Manjeet Singh) is the real culprit. Fortunately, he was arrested when he came back to India from Canada. Now, the case has taken a new turn. After collecting all the evidences, I am going to file a petition in the Supreme
Court for reopening of the case,” Sheikh said.
Sheikh claimed that Manjeet Singh was an accused in the assassination of Beant Singh, the chief minister of India’s Punjab province. He added that Manjeet Singh had deserted his Pakistani and Indian wives before marrying a woman in Canada.
“I have collected foreign media reports and his criminal records. He married another woman there (in Canada) after deserting his Pakistani wife and his first (Indian) wife. He had met Chief Minister Beant Singh (of Indian Punjab province) who was killed shortly after the meeting.
He is an accused in the case. He also met our chief minister Ghulam Haider Wayne who was later killed,” added Sheikh.
Sarabjit Singh’s counsel also mentioned that Manjeet Singh stayed in Karachi for three years and married
a Pakistani girl by projecting himself as a Muslim.
“Manjeet Singh used to come here. He was here when Sarabjit Singh was arrested in 1991 on charges of bomb blast. He (Manjeet Singh) stayed in Karachi for three years. He projected himself as a Muslim here and married a Pakistan girl who was a daughter of a Pakistani government official,” said Sheikh. Pakistani officials said Sarabjit Singh was arrested while trying to slip back into India after the bomb blasts.
The government suspended his death sentence in May 2009 after his family visited Pakistan and appealed for clemency. But a three-member bench upheld the sentence last month, saying they had no reason to reconsider the original sentence.