ISLAMABAD, Oct. 06, 2005
Mariana Baabar
NRI, non-resident Indian, Mayor of London Borough
of Hounslow Darshan Grewal has said he will seek British
Prime Minister Tony Blair’s intervention for
the release of Sarabjit Singh, sentenced to death
on charges of engineering bomb blasts in Pakistan.
"I have talked to Sarabjit’s elder sister
Dalbir Kaur and decided to apprise Prime Minister
Tony Blair about it. I’ll request his intervention
by asking him to talk to the Pakistan government on
the issue," the London Councillor told reporters
Friday, reports from London said.
Grewal has also "personally" requested
the authorities in Pakistan to take the Sarabjit Singh
case sympathetically as it "is a clear-cut case
of mistaken identity." "I will also write
to every Punjabi publication in Britain, Canada and
other countries to apprise the governments about the
issue and seek their intervention," Grewal, who
was elected to the mayoral office in May this year,
said.
He hailed the Indian government’s efforts regarding
Sarabjit issue, but lamented that the results were
not very encouraging. "The Indian government
should discuss the Sarabjit issue seriously with Pakistan
to help him" he added.
Meanwhile Dalbir Kaur, sister of alleged Indian spy
Sarabjit Singh, Tuesday said she would meet External
Affairs Minister Natwar Singh and urge him to raise
the issue of her brother’s release with the Pakistani
leadership during his visit to Islamabad next month.
Pakistan Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the death
sentence awarded to Sarabjit in another bomb blast
case. "I am going to New Delhi tomorrow to meet
the External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh, who
is coming to Pakistan next month, to raise the issue
of Sarabjit’s release during the talks with his
counterpart," Dalbir Kaur said by phone say reports
from New Delhi.
There was renewed hope in Sarabjit Singh’s family
after President Pervez Muhsarraf publicly admitted
on the case saying though the law will take its own
course he himself wanted to take a considerate view.
The issue was also raised recently in New York in
his meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Meanwhile India and Pakistan will exchange the lists
of prisoners twice a year, Indian Defence Minister
Pranab Mukherjee told reporters here after a meeting
of the cabinet committee on security with India’s
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in chair.
Mukherjee said that the consular services would be
made available within a span of three months and the
list of prisoners will be exchanged by the two countries
twice a year — January one and July one. Earlier,
no time-frame was fixed for the process.
Pakistan and India will need an amendment in the
1982 agreement to implement the decision, which is
expected to be signed during the four-day visit of
India’s External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh
to Pakistan.
The move comes after several media exposes which
revealed that the bureaucracy on both sides chose
to "forget" each others prisoners and in
many cases had not even provided them with consular
services even though their nationalities were well
known.
The case of Sarabjit Singh is one such case where
he was being tried in an open court in Pakistan and
yet the Indian High Commission over these long years
not once stepped in to help its citizen in any way.
