Sarabjit’s death

‘An eye for an eye would make the whole world go blind’

“An eye for an eye would make the whole world go blind,” was what the great Mahatma Gandhi once said. Born into the divisive politics that the British colonialisers had imposed onto the subcontinent that culminated into the partition, Gandhi’s wisdom could not do much to stop the violence that killed millions at the independence of the subcontinent. But perhaps, born into different times, it is a lesson that is worth repeating after Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh’s unfortunate death after some prisoners beat him up in Kot Lakhpat Jail. On Thursday, the prisoners who are accused of killing Sarabjit claimed to police, “We believe killing Sarabjit was an act of virtue. If any of our friends gets a hold of Sarabjit’s body, it will be burnt to ashes.”

The statements are of the breed we have become used to: murderers claim piety upon killing someone over a petty dispute. The details emerging from Kot Lakhpat Jail point to the same. But as has become the norm, when one such incident happens on one side of the border, there are jingoists on the other side that feel they must run up a cricket score. On Friday, news broke that a Pakistani prisoner named Sanaullah was beaten up by an inmate in a jail in Jammu. The Pakistani man had been put in prison in 1999 and sentenced in 2009 to life in prison for being a “militant.” Questions over the conviction a decade after arrest are sure to arise, but such is the story of the plight of most prisoners that get caught up in the cross border rivalries between India and Pakistan. As it stands, there are at least 535 Indian prisoners in Pakistani jails and 272 Pakistani prisoners in Indian jails, that can be considered at risk.

The prisoners taking on the task of delivering ‘justice’ is a most dangerous precedent. It must be curbed immediately on both sides. It is essential that in the immediate aftermath of these incidents, the security for all cross-border prisoners should be increased within prisons. While the Indian prime minister’s demand for complete justice and through investigation is just, the same must also be done for the Pakistani prisoner that was attacked. The pride expressed by the prisoner who killed Sarabjit Singh is a product of the jingoism that is present on both sides of the divide. There is a need to conduct through investigation of the attack on Sarabjit to assure the Indian authorities that Pakistan does care to protect India’s citizens. There should be no reciprocal incident in a Pakistani jail nor does the media need to spruce up the incident to inflame cross-border feelings. For once, Pakistan and India have begun to see eye to eye and cultivate trust amongst each other. The fact is that Sarabjit’s body was eventually returned to be buried in his hometown of Amritsar on Thursday. Unfortunately, he was not alive to see that day.