Sarabjit gets to live for a few more days

DEATH AND DEADLINE: Sarbajit has been found guility of spying and bombings in two Pakistan cities.

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New Delhi: The death sentence awarded to Sarabjit Singh, the Indian who was to be hanged on May 1 in Pakistan for terrorism, will be extended so that he can meet his family.

Sources in the Pakistan government told CNN-IBN that Sarabjit’s death sentence would be extended by a few more days but a retrial is not possible at this stage. An official announcement is expected on Friday evening.

Pakistan's former human rights minister Ansar Burney told CNN-IBN from Lahore that he expected the death sentence to be extended but it was too late for a retrial.

India on Friday again appealed to Pakistan to Sarabjit's life. “I would appeal to the authorities in Pakistan to show clemency to Shri Sarabjit Singh, an Indian prisoner who has been in (a) Pakistani jail since 1990 and who has been under sentence of death for the last 17 years,” External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said.

Sarbajit was arrested in 1990 from near the international border and charged with spying and carrying out four bombings that killed 14 people and injured dozens more in Lahore and Faisalabad. Pakistan's Supreme Court in 2006 upheld the death sentence.

He was to be hanged on March 31 but India’s intervention led to the execution being postponed by a month.

Sarabjit’ sister Dalbir Kaur claims he is innocent and mistakenly crossed into Pakistan on August 28, 1990. Dalbir Kaur is travelling to Pakistan on April 23 to meet him.

Senior BJP leader L K Advani has urged Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to spare Sarabjit’s life. “I plead the case for clemency of Sarabjit Singh. I urge you to adopt a bold step and grant clemency to Sarabjit Singh," Advani said in a letter to Gillani dated April 6.

Granting clemency to Sarabjit would be an "act of magnanimity” and “win the goodwill of the Indian people, and buttress our common objective in South Asia,” said in Advani in the letter, which released on Thursday.

(With inputs from IANS)

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