Pak grants second consular access to Sarabjit Singh

Islamabad (Agencies): The Indian High Commission officials on Sunday visited Sarabjit Singh, comatose in a Lahore hospital following a brutal assault, for the second time in as many days after permission was granted by Pakistani authorities following an initial denial. "The officials visited Singh in the Lahore hospital. His condition remains unchanged," spokesperson in the Ministry of External Affairs said. Pakistan initially restricted consular access, prompting Indian officials to take up the issue with their Pakistani counterparts. Two officials of the Indian High Commission were allowed to visit Sarabjit, who is in an intensive care unit in Lahore's Jinnah Hospital, only for a few minutes early on Saturday. Subsequently, the Pakistani side informed the Indians that the consular access granted on Friday was meant for only one visit, sources told a news agency. The Indian side has taken up the issue with their Pakistani counterparts, saying that Indian officials should be allowed unhindered access to Sarabjit in view of his condition. Talks were going on between the two sides on this issue, the sources added. Sarabjit, 49, was admitted to Jinnah Hospital on Friday after he was attacked by at least six other prisoners within his barrack at Kot Lakhpat Jail. He was was convicted by a Pakistani court for alleged involvement in a string of bombing in Punjab that killed 14 people in 1990.

Send him to India for treatment, pleads wife Family allowed to have a glimpse of him Lahore (PTI): The distraught family of a comatose Sarabjit Singh was on Sunday allowed to have a glimpse of him from a distance at the hospital where he is being treated after a brutal assault in a Pakistani jail. A senior doctor of the state-run Jinnah Hospital told PTI that Sarabjit's sister, wife and two daughters were allowed to see him through a window from outside the intensive care unit as it was "not good for the patient as well as attendants to get close to each other". "We have learnt that Sarabjit is not getting good treatment in (Jinnah) hospital. It will be better if my husband is allowed to come back for treatment," his wife Sukhpreet Kaur earlier said while talking to reporters after crossing over to Pakistan at the Wagah land border crossing. She arrived in Pakistan on Sunday afternoon along with her daughters, Swapandeep and Poonam and Sarabjit's sister Dalbir Kaur. They were granted visas by the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi on Saturday to visit Sarabjit. Sarabjit's counsel, Awais Shiekh, and members of civil society groups received them at Wagah. Dalbir Kaur, who has travelled to Pakistan in the past to lobby political leaders for the release of Sarabjit, said she and other members of her family were visiting the country in sad circumstances. "I've come to visit my brother, who is seriously injured and not speaking. I've been told he is in a coma," she said. She said she had come with the love and prayers of crores of Indians and brought prashad from the Golden Temple that she would give to her brother. Fighting back tears, she said, "I kept telling myself: How can you fall into a coma, Sarabjit? You have a family and you have to come back to your country."

Attackers wanted to kill him Lahore (PTI): The main accused in the brutal attack on Sarabjit Singh have told investigators that they planned to kill him to take revenge for bombings he was accused of carrying out in Lahore. According to a preliminary report, Amer Aftab and Mudassar � both death row prisoners � said they hated Sarabjit because he was accused of killing many Pakistanis in bomb blasts in Lahore in 1990. For the attack on 49-year-old Sarabjit, the duo said they sharpened spoons to use as knives, made blades from pieces of empty ghee tin and collected bricks.