Pak awaits family’s nod to turn off Sarabjit ventilator
Doctors at Lahore’s Jinnah Hospital are awaiting permission from the family of Indian death row prisoner Sarabjit Singh and a green signal from the government to withdraw ventilator support and officially declare him dead.
Sources said that Sarabjit, who was critically wounded in Kot Lakhpat jail on Friday by inmates, is “clinically dead” and was being kept alive artificially. “We will remove ventilator support when the family agrees and the government asks us to do so,” a hospital official said.
The dejected family returned to India on Wednesday as his condition remained highly critical amid reports that he was brain dead.
A visibly distraught Dalbir Kaur, Sarabjit Singh’s sister, told reporters at the Wagah border that she was returning to India to take care of Sarabjit’s children. She demanded that Pakistan hold an inquiry into how Sarabjit’s security was compromised and he was attacked with bricks and iron rods.
“If the attack was planned by the government itself then there is no need for an inquiry. But if he was attacked without the knowledge of the authorities, then an inquiry is definitely needed,” she said.
Indian death row prisoner Sarabjit Singh’s lawyer Awais Sheikh said he would file a fresh petition in the Lahore High Court seeking its permission to allow Indian doctors to be part of the medical board as the Pakistani doctors were not telling the “whole truth.” Sarabjit was convicted for his involvement in serial bomb blasts in Lahore and Faisalabad in 1990. He was awarded the death sentence in 1991. Sarajbit’s lawyer claims his client is innocent and that it is a case of mistaken identity. He is named Manjeet Singh in the FIR.