Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology Kapil Sibal on Friday said India could not break off the dialogue process with Pakistan after the death of Sarabjit Singh.
He was addressing a press conference at the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee office here in the run-up to the May 5 Assembly elections.
Asked about the Bharatiya Janata Party’s demand that India scale down its diplomatic relations with Pakistan, he said: “We are incensed at this issue. In general, if we are angry with someone and consider them our enemy, we just cannot stop talking to them completely. It is enough if we make them know that we are furious… In the same way, we cannot break off dialogue with Pakistan…”
Pakistan, he asserted, should have protected Sarabjit. “You [Pakistan] should have protected Sarabjit because he was in your jail. We did not allow anything to happen to Kasab [gunman of the Mumbai attacks] when he was in our jail. We protected him till the Supreme Court decided his case. Later, action was initiated according to the Supreme Court’s judgment.”
