By IANS,
New Delhi : The family of Sarabjit Singh, an Indian prisoner on death row in Pakistan, will finally get to see him after nearly 18 years with the Pakistan high commission handing over visas to five family members to travel to Lahore.
The visas, handed over Friday, are for travel to Lahore and visit Kot Lakhpat jail, where he has been kept.
Sarabjit’s sister, Dalbir Kaur, said the visas were for herself, her husband, Sarabjit’s wife and two daughters. She had applied for them in the last week of March.
“I was sitting in Sisganj Gurudwara in the manager’s office when I got a phone call from the Pakistan high commission to come and collect the passports. I asked, ‘Have I got a visa?’ He said yes. I started to tremble,” Dalbir Kaur told IANS.
The visas can be availed of within one month and are valid for a stay of seven days, with permission to travel only to Lahore and Nankana Sahib, she said.
Dalbir Kaur said the family would leave for Pakistan Sunday by road. “I am so happy that I can’t tell you. I have hope that he will be pardoned now,” she said.
Sarabjit, who is known as Manjit Singh in Pakistan, has been held guilty of bombings in Lahore and Multan in 1990 that left 14 people dead. He is to be executed April 30. He was to be hanged March 31 but the intervention of the Indian government led to the execution being postponed by a month.
Dalbir Kaur claims he is innocent and had crossed into Pakistan inadvertently in an inebriated state Aug 28, 1990.