By IANS,
Chandigarh : With raised hopes that her brother Sarabjit Singh, on death row in Pakistan on terrorism charges, may not face the gallows, Dalbir Kaur has started a campaign to help about 45 Pakistani prisoners who are languishing in Indian prisons.
“I have got a list of 45 Pakistani prisoners who are lodged in Indian jails. Their families too are awaiting their release. I will highlight their cause before the appropriate authorities to seek their release,” Kaur said here.
She said she was in touch with human rights activists and lawyers here to pursue the case of the Pakistani prisoners.
She pointed out that a Pakistani national, Amjad Ali, who overstayed beyond the limit of his visa has been languishing in a jail in Delhi since 1993 even after completing his sentence.
Kaur and other family members had gone to Lahore April 23 to meet Sarabjit for the first time in 18 years in Kot Lakhpat jail.
Sarabjit has been sentenced to death on charges of being behind two blasts in Lahore and Multan in 1990 in which 14 people were killed. Last Friday, the Pakistani government stayed indefinitely the execution of his death sentence.
His family claims he is not Manjit Singh, as Pakistan’s security agencies claim, and had crossed into Pakistan in an inebriated state inadvertently in 1990.
While advocating that the governments of both countries should be sympathetic to cases of prisoners languishing in each other’s prison, Kaur said that no terrorist should be released by India in lieu of the return of her brother.