Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Indian spy convict 'faces death'


Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has reportedly signed the death warrant for an Indian man who was convicted of spying and carrying out bomb blasts.
A Lahore jail official said Sarabjit Singh would be executed on 1 April.

He says he is a poor farmer and victim of mistaken identity who strayed drunk from his border village into Pakistan.

The human rights minister of Pakistan, Ansar Burney, told the BBC he was not aware of any death warrant being signed by the president.

Mr Musharraf rejected Mr Singh's mercy petition earlier this month, a day after another Indian man, Kashmir Singh, was released following 35 years on death row in Pakistan for alleged spying.

Sarabjit Singh was convicted in 1991 of spying and carrying out four bombings which killed 14 people the year before in the Pakistani cities of Lahore and Faisalabad.

Political pressure

Pakistani officials say he was arrested while trying to slip back into India.

Two years ago, Pakistan's Supreme Court rejected Mr Singh's attempt to have his death sentence overturned.

The case has received wide publicity in India and the government has come under intense political pressure to intervene.

In 2005, former Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh asked for Mr Singh to be pardoned on humanitarian grounds.

India and Pakistan have jailed hundreds of each other's soldiers and civilians over years of hostility.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Four killed, 53 injured in Assam blast

At least four persons were killed and 53 others, including four Assam police personnel, injured in a grenade attack by suspected ULFA militants at a tribal function in a village in Upper Assam, police said on Sunday.

Official sources said the bomb exploded in an open field on Saturday night where a local festival Ali-Aie-Lrigang (Lrigang) was being celebrated near the telephone exchange at Jonai.

More than 1,500 people had gathered at the venue for the cultural festival, sources said.

The injured have been rushed to Assam Medical College hospital in Dibrugarh, they said.