Sarabjit critical; Pak officials dismiss report about sending him abroad

New Delhi, April 29: New Delhi on Monday asked Islamabad to consider the option of transferring Sarabjit Singh to India for better medical treatment.

India has also appealed to Pakistan to take a sympathetic and humanitarian view of Sarabjit Singh's case and release him.

News agency has reported that New Delhi has demanded that the attack on Sarabjit Singh be thoroughly investigated and those responsible be punished.

India has said that it is the responsibility of Pakistan government to ensure safety and security of all Indian prisoners in their custody.

Earlier, Pakistani officials today dismissed a report that a medical board was considering a proposal to send Sarabjit Singh abroad for better treatment who is in coma since the brutal assault in Kot Lakhpat Jail, last friday .

Sarabjit, 49, sustained several injuries, including a skull fracture, when six prisoners attacked him in Kot Lakhpat Jail and doctors said his chances of survival are slim.

Meanwhile, a Pakistani lawyer Barrister Zafarullah filed a petition today in the Lahore

Registry of the Supreme Court asking it to direct authorities to send Sarabjit to Britain for treatment.

The four-member medical board headed by Jinnah Hospital chief executive Mahmood Shaukat conducted a routine examination of Sarabjit on Monday morning, officials said.

They rejected a media report that the board was mulling a proposal to send Sarabjit abroad for treatment.

"No such proposal has been under consideration," an official of the health department of Punjab province said.

"In fact, the medical board has no mandate (to decide about sending Sarabjit abroad)," said the official, who did not want to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

The medical board is "minutely monitoring the patient" and Sarabjit is being given the "best treatment" at Jinnah Hospital, the official said.

The members of the medical board Shaukat, Postgraduate Medical Institute principal Anjum Habib Vohra, Jinnah Hospital neuro department head Zafar Chaudhry and King Edward Medical University neuro-physician Naeem Kasuri see Sarabjit's case as "major neurosurgical challenge", the sources said.

Sarabjit, 49, sustained several injuries, including a skull fracture, when six prisoners attacked him in Kot Lakhpat Jail on Friday and doctors said his chances of survival are slim.

He was hit on the head with bricks and cut with sharp weapons.

He is in a deep coma and on ventilator support in an intensive care unit of Jinnah Hospital.

He was convicted of alleged involvement in a string of bomb attacks in Punjab province that killed 14 people in 1990.

His mercy petitions were rejected by the courts and former President Pervez Musharraf.

The outgoing Pakistan Peoples Party-led government put off Sarabjit's execution for an indefinite period in 2008.

Sarabjit's family says he is the victim of mistaken identity and had inadvertently strayed across the border in an inebriated state.