Sarabjit Singh not to be sent abroad

Pakistan on Monday ruled out the possibility that Indian death row prisoner Sarabjit Singh could be sent abroad for treatment.

In a statement on Monday, the Foreign Office said Singh, who is under treatment in Lahore’s JinnahHospital after being beaten up by fellow inmates in Kot Lakhpat Jail, was neither being sent abroad for the treatment nor would Indian doctors be given access to him.

It said a panel of Pakistani experts had been formed for medical treatment of the Indian terrorist convicted for bomb blast in Pakistan that killed many Pakistanis 23 years ago.

Earlier, the media reported that four-member panel of Pakistani medical experts supervising the treatment of Sarabjit had been asked to decide whether he should be sent abroad for treatment.

The panel headed by Mehmood Shaukat was directed by the government to decide whether Sarabjit, 49, should be sent abroad or foreign neurosurgeons be called to Pakistan to treat him.

The administration of JinnahHospital, where Sarabjit has been in an intensive care unit since Friday, has received a formal order from the government in this regard, the report said.

The panel of experts examined Sarabjit again on Monday and studied the results of tests done on him so far, including two CT scans. There was no official word on the development.

Sarabjit sustained several injuries, including a skull fracture, when six prisoners attacked him in Kot Lakhpat Jail on Friday and doctors said his chances of survival were slim.

He was hit on the head with bricks and his neck and torso cut with sharp weapons. He is in a deep coma and doctors said there had been no improvement in his condition.

Meanwhile, Sarabjit’s family Monday appealed to the Indian government to bring him back home for treatment.

Sarabjit’s family met him at JinnahHospital and the prisoner’s sister Dalbir Kaur told reporters that he was in an extremely tragic condition.

“His stomach was bloated. His face was swollen up. He was beaten up badly,” she was quoted as saying.

Saddened with Sarabjit’s tragic condition, his hapless family pleaded for help from the Indian government, which said it would do everything it could to bring him home.

Sarabjit’s family arrived in Lahore city of Pakistan from Amritsar on Sunday afternoon to be with him. After meeting him at JinnahHospital, the family pleaded that he be allowed to be taken back to India or any other country immediately for treatment.

“When we met him in the ICU, he was just lying there. Doctors told us that his condition was critical. Please help us to save my brother’s life,” Sarabjit’s elder sister Dalbir Kaur said in Lahore. She is accompanied by his wife Sukhpreet Kaur, and two daughters, Swapandeep and Poonam.

“I plead to our government with folded hands. Please take him to any country for his treatment. Don’t waste time, save him. So far, when I tried to fight for his freedom, I only got hollow assurances,” she said.

Minister of State for External Affairs Preneet Kaur responded later in the evening, promising all help.

“I think at the moment the first priority is to stabilise him. I don’t suppose you could really move him at this stage. But we can certainly do everything we can. We have done it in the past and the matter has been taken up at every level,” Preneet Kaur told reporters.

She said the government had always brought up the topic of Sarabjit at every level with Pakistan to let him come home on humanitarian grounds.