Sarabjit Singh

Daily Times

The family of Sarabjit Singh, the Indian prisoner who died as a result of injuries inflicted on him by other inmates at Kot Lakhpat Jail, got to spend ten minutes with him in the hospital before returning home disconsolate, since it was obvious by then that he was going. When the doctors pronounced him dead, this ended the 23-year-long, very controversial story of a man who according to the Indian authorities was convicted falsely in a case of mistaken identity, but who was found guilty by the Pakistani courts of terrorist acts in Lahore and Faisalabad that killed 14 people. The case has attracted a high level of attention, as Sarabjit’s mercy petition remained undecided for long. It is reported that he was planning to file another mercy petition to the president but death overtook that plan. After a brief procedural delay in Lahore on Thursday, the special Indian plane sent for the purpose took off, bearing the body home. What could be termed another unfortunate blow to the already wafer-thin interaction between the two conflicted neighbours now requires appropriate responses from the two governments to ensure that no knee jerk reactions upend the fragile normalisation process. A definitive statement after a thorough investigation by the Pakistani authorities is imperative, which would be a testimonial of the state to its rejection of any act that goes against its constitutional, legal, ethical, social and diplomatic code of conduct. Caretaker Punjab Chief Minister Najam Sethi has ordered a full, comprehensive investigation into how a high-profile prisoner, locked up in the most secure part of the jail, suddenly became accessible to other dangerous inmates, who despite the alleged presence of wardens, unleashed a brutal attack on Singh, armed with iron rods and bricks (how those became available to them is another very important question here), and got away with, literally, murder. The report, to be submitted within 15 days, must examine the possibility that the jail authorities may have been complicit in the murder, or at the very least negligent. The entire incident is layered in very suspicious circumstances, and it is the duty of the government to make the report public. Considering the pragmatism and level-headedness of Dr Manmohan Singh’s conduct vis-à-vis Pakistan, it is to be hoped, beyond the immediate expected emotional response of outrage and grief, that no step would be taken in haste to endanger the normalisation process between the two countries, a setback threatening to once again darken the geopolitical scenario of a region already embroiled in too many unnecessary and vicious tugs towards renewed conflict.