India & Pak: A new point of friction
The death in a Pakistani hospital in the early hours of Thursday of Sarabjit Singh, the Indian prisoner who was subjected to a murderous attack by fellow prisoners in a high-security Lahore jail in extremely suspicious circumstances a week ago, marks a new low in the way Indians are treated in Pakistani jails. Matters are made worse with the realisation that Sarabjit is not the only Indian prisoner to have been killed in a Pakistani jail in recent times. But his case galls Indians, and causes extreme sorrow here, because no one believes he was a spy who carried out explosions in Pakistan, the charge on which Sarabjit was convicted and sent to death row. No reasonable quarters even in Pakistan can equate the case of Sarabjit with that of Ajmal Kasab, the lone Pakistani terrorist nabbed live as he was shooting up Indians in Mumbai.
The depth of anger felt in this country can be gauged from the resolution on Sarabjit adopted in both Houses of Parliament and the demand by the BJP, the principal Opposition party, for downgrading ties with Pakistan and the recall of India’s high commissioner from Islamabad. It is in light of the magnitude of the perceived injustice done to Sarabjit in Pakistan, and in deference to the grievous hurt caused to public sentiment here, that the government has flown in a special aircraft to bring back the body of a poor prisoner. Given the circumstances, Islamabad cannot reasonably expect it will be business as usual in India-Pakistan relations unless correctives are effected.
It will be long remembered that Pakistan authorities waved rules and laws at Indian requests that Sarabjit, who lay in deep coma, be allowed to be shifted either to India or a third country for quality treatment. What a contrast with the case of the hapless schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who not long ago was brutally attacked by extremists for wanting to attend school, was shipped out for treatment to Britain because Pakistani medical facilities were just not good enough. The whole world applauded the sense of judgement displayed at that time by Pakistani authorities.
As we denounce the brutal mindset of the Pakistan government in dealing with India and Indians, we salute the good Samaritans in that country, Sarabjit’s lawyer and human rights activists, for trying to set off the right sparks.