News
Sunday, May 05, 2013
Pakistan officials visit ‘critically’ hurt prisoner in IndiaNEW DELHI: Pakistani embassy officials visited a hospital in north India on Saturday where a Pakistani prisoner was in critical condition in the intensive care unit after being attacked by an Indian inmate.
Sanaullah suffered multiple head injuries in a prison in India’s northern city of Jammu in an apparent tit-for-tat attack after an Indian prisoner, Sarabjit Singh, was fatally assaulted in Pakistan.
On Friday, Sanaullah was airlifted to a government hospital in Chandigarh.
A spokeswoman for the government hospital said Sanaullah was in the intensive care unit and on a ventilator as his condition “continues to remain critical”.
The Pakistani High Commission (embassy) officials “came to the hospital and we have given them Sanaullah’s medical update”, added Manju Wadwalkar, the spokeswoman of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research Hospital.
Sanaullah, who hails from Sialkot in Pakistan, was attacked by a prisoner who was identified as a former Indian army soldier nearly 24 hours after Singh’s death in Lahore.
India’s foreign ministry said Pakistan High Commission officials had been given daily access to Sanaullah.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said earlier in the week in a statement that the “obvious retaliation to the death of Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh is condemnable”.
The prison violence could aggravate tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, whose relations were hit by a border flare-up earlier this year that undermined efforts to build trust.
According to the Indian government, 535 Indian prisoners, including 483 fishermen, are in Pakistani jails, while 272 Pakistani prisoners are behind bars in India.
The attack on Sanaullah came a day after India ordered tighter security for Pakistanis serving time in Indian jails. afp
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk