An Appeal

I appeal to the Indian Government to forthwith send back Sanaullah, a Pakistani prisoner who was attacked in a Jammu jail and is said to be in coma, to Pakistan, as requested by the Pakistan Government. This will be a humanitarian act.

I also appeal to the Governments of India and Pakistan to immediately set up committees to review cases of all prisoners in the other country, and to set up mechanisms for early release of those convicted on alleged 'confessions' or insufficient or suspicious evidence. Many of such persons have been convicted on alleged 'confession'. Everyone knows how 'confessions' are obtained in our countries (by third degree methods).

Hence reliance on these for conviction is totally unsafe.

Unfortunately many people regard nationals of the other country with a lot of prejudices, and it is time that these prejudices are removed, otherwise great injustice can be caused, as in the cases of Dr. Khalil Chishty and Sarabjit Singh.

  --Justice Katju

Release of Sarabjit Singh : Letter to H.E. The Pakistan President and H.E. The PM of Pakistan

To

H.E. The Pakistan High Commissioner to India

Janab Salman Bashir Saheb

Your Excellency,

  

I request you to convey my following message to H.E. The President of Pakistan and H.E. The Prime Minister of Pakistan :

Your Excellency,

           You must have heard that Ajmal Kasab has been hanged in India. I wish to respectfully point out to you that his case is totally different from that of Sarabjit Singh who has been on death row in Pakistan for 21 years in connection with the Lahore bomb blast in 1990 which killed 14 persons.

About Kasab there is no doubt about his guilt, as he was caught red handed. However, there is grave doubt about the guilt of Sarabjit Singh. So the two cases are not similar.

No doubt your Courts have convicted Sarabjit, but I have carefully perused the evidence in his case and have found serious flaws in the prosecution version. His name was not even in the First Information Report. The main prosecution witness Shaukat Salim later retracted his statement and said it was given under police pressure. As regards his alleged 'confession', we all know how 'confessions are obtained in both our countries (by third degree methods ). Sarabjit's own version was that he had gone illegally to Pakistan for doing illegal liquor trade, and was arrested there and later falsely implicated in the bomb blast case.

 Be that as it may, he has already spent over 21 years on death row, where one does not know when he may be hanged. This is enough to drive any one mad. I sincerely urge you to show mercy and excercise your power of pardon in his case.

  In my previous 4 letters to you pleading for his pardon I have quoted Portia's speech on mercy in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and the poem of the great Urdu poet Faiz. 

I earnestly request you once again to pardon him and send him back to India

 Regards

Justice Markandey Katju

(Chairman, Press Council of India 

Former Judge, Supreme Court of India )

Response of H.E. The Pakistan Ambassador to India

Thank you Justice Katju. Your message will be forwarded to Islamabad.

Regards

Salman Bashir