The Pakistan Human Rights Commission has said that Sarabjit Singh’s lawyer, Awais Sheikh, and his family have been receiving threatening letters and calls from the Taliban. The commission has urged chief minister of Pakistan’s Punjab province to provide security to Mr Sheikh.
The panel also said that a CID official tried to kidnap Mr Sheikh in Pakistan a day before Sarabjit’s death, when he had accompanied his family to Wagah border to see them off.
Sarabjit Singh, 49, was a death row convict at the Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore, Pakistan. On Friday last, a group of other prisoners had hit him on his head with bricks. He was taken to the Jinnah hospital in Lahore in a comatose state and was on ventilator support till he died early on Thursday.
Sarabjit was sentenced to death for bomb blasts in the Punjab province that killed 14 people in 1990. His family says he was innocent and that he had strayed across the border into Pakistan when drunk.
