Click to play videoNew Delhi: Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Sri Prakash Jaiswal said on Thursday that no Pakistani prisoner would be released in exchange for Sarabjit Singh.
India had made an appeal to Pakistan to spare the life of Sarabjit Singh, who has been convicted for four bomb blasts in Lahore and Multan in 1990 and now faces execution on April 30. Sarabjit was originally scheduled to be hanged on April 1.
The appeal has been received by the Pakistan Foreign Office and forwarded to Musharraf and the Interior Ministry.
Sources in Islamabad had told CNN-IBN, however, that Pakistan may seek to bargain with India and may try to win the release of its own nationals held in Indian prisons for terrorism and other crimes.
Meanwhile, India also upped its diplomatic stakes and told Pakistan's new government-in-making that hanging Sarabjit would vitiate bilateral relations and has cited the precedent of Kashmir Singh’s release after 35 years, although he had been charged with spying in Pakistan.
Pakistan, on its part, has been insisting that the case against Sarabjit is very different from that against Kashmir Singh.
This would surely come as a shock to Sarabjit’s wife Sukhpreet Kaur who had earlier said that the Indian government would work out the modalities for her husband’s release. Sukhpreet had also made a statement that she did not want her husband’s freedom in exchange for the release of terrorists.
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