Pak Govt gets July 13 deadline to reply to plea seeking Sarabjit Singh's execution

Lahore, July 6(ANI): The Lahore High Court has directed the Pakistan Government to submit a reply by July 13 to a petition seeking the execution of the 20-year old death sentence to alleged Indian terrorist Sarabjit Singh.

Singh has been convicted of killing 14 Pakistani nationals in a string of bomb blasts in 1990.

The court passed the said order after hearing arguments of the petitioner-counsel Rana Ilumuddin Ghazi, who accused the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government and President Asif Ali Zardari of harbouring a soft corner for the convict.

"This [attitude] had encouraged Ms Dalbir Kaur, the sister of the convict, to make new mercy appeal for his release claiming him to be innocent," The Nation quoted Ghazi, as telling the court.

He also filed a petition submitting that Dalbir Kaur was making an all-out effort to win sympathies of Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani and the President for getting a presidential pardon, and urged the court to restrain Zardari from pardoning Singh on the fresh mercy appeal.

Ghazi pleaded that the court ask the Punjab Home Secretary as to why the black warrants of the convict were not issued in the last 20 years after his appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court.

The petitioner also contended that the president's power to pardon a murder convict is against Holy Quran and Sunnah, which say that nobody except legal heirs or family of the victim has the right to pardon a murderer.

He requested the court that the government should be asked to remove Article 45 from the Constitution, declaring it against Holy Quran and Sunnah. (ANI)