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| Indian prisoner in Pakistan to take a new turn | | Sarabjit Singh' freedom linked to Mohamed Arif | | SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI, July 2: Indian prisoner in Pakistan, Sarabjit Singh, facing death sentence in Lahore, is quite likely to return to India sooner than later.
But his eventual freedom is linked to the likely freedom from an Indian jail of the alleged Red Fort attack conspirator, Mohammed Arif.
Ministry of Home Affairs, it is said, is secretly working on the possibility to swap Sarabjit Singh with Mohammed Arif. Secret operations, in this regard, despite denials by Foreign Offices of India and Pakistan.
According to a report doing the rounds in Delhi on Sunbday evening, a senior official of the Home Ministry rang up Tihar Jails authorities on Friday to get information on Mohamed Arif’s criminal record, the sentence details and his conduct in the jail.
Arif, an alleged Pakistani member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, was found guilty of 12 heinous crimes and sentenced to death by a Delhi court on October 30. He is currently serving his term in a high-security ward of Jail No 1 in the Tihar Jails.
The government of India has failed to persuade Pakistan President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to pardon and release Sarabjit Singh, whose death sentence was confirmed by Pakistan’s Supreme Court in September. Sarabjit, whom the Pakistani government describes as an agent of the India's intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), with Manjit Singh as his real name, was arrested in Pakistan in 1990 on charges of espionage and terrorism, and carrying out bomb blasts in Lahore, Kasur and Faisalabad.
The record shows that 32-year old Arif, who was the “mastermind” behind the attack on an Army camp inside the Red Fort in Delhi on December 22, 2000, is a resident of Abbotabad city of Pakistan. In the Red Fort attack case, two of Arif’s accomplices were given life terms, while three others were sentenced to seven years in jail. All of them are being kept in the Tihar Jails. |
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