External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met the family of Kirpal Singh, the Indian prisoner who died in a Pakistani jail on April 11, and promised a full inquiry into the death.
While Pakistani officials had informed India that Singh, who had spent 24 years in the Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore, died after a heart attack, family members who met Ms. Swaraj alleged “foul play”.
India’s Acting High Commissioner in Islamabad, J.P. Singh, met the Director-General for South Asia in the Pakistani Ministry for Foreign Affairs to request that Singh’s body be flown to India at the earliest.
“The [High Commissioner] would also seek official information on the death and the post-mortem report,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted, adding that India was “awaiting further details”.
Officials told The Hindu that while the Pakistani Ministry had said they expected to release the body in a day or two, as all formalities such as establishing nationality were unnecessary, there had been no decision as of Wednesday night on when the body may reach Delhi.
Earlier this week, the Kot Lakhpat jail sub-inspector Nafees told reporters that “the victim’s condition deteriorated on Monday morning and he was shifted to Jinnah Hospital for treatment. However, he could not survive despite remaining in the intensive care unit for three hours.” The case comes amid a series of events that have raised tensions between India and Pakistan, beginning with the Pathankot airbase attack on January 2, and the recent arrest in Pakistan of an alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav. Kirpal Singh was arrested by Pakistani officials in 1992, and subsequently charged and sentenced to death for two bomb blasts that had occurred in Pakistan’s Punjab. The death of Sarabjit Singh in May 2013, an Indian prisoner at Kot Lakhpat Jail murdered by inmates had raised tensions between India and Pakistan.
