I will continue to represent Sarabjit, says lawyer

  A Pakistani lawyer, whose no-show led to the Pakistan Supreme Court dismissing Sarabjit Singh’s review petitions challenging his death sentence, says he continues to represent the condemned Indian prisoner on behalf of a Canadian Sikh organisation, and is preparing to appeal for restoration of the petitions.

Rana Abdul Hamid showed no interest in Sarabjit’s case, according to him, because of his job until recently as the Punjab government’s additional advocate-general. But his tenure as government prosecutor now over, Mr. Hamid is all fired up by the case even though it is no longer appears relevant to his fate, which seems more linked to the ups and downs of India-Pakistan ties.

In a telephone interview with The Hindu, the Lahore-based lawyer was indignant at reports that Sarabjit’s family had hired a new lawyer to represent him. It was not Sarabjit’s family that had hired him but a Canadian Sikh group called the South Asian Human Rights Organisation headed by Harpal Singh Nagra, Mr. Hamid said.

“I cannot be sacked by Sarabjit’s family because I was not hired by them. If the case has to be taken away from me, it has to be done by the organisation that hired me to begin with,” he said. “I remain Sarabjit’s lawyer, and I will soon be moving the court for restoration of the petitions.”

Interestingly, the Vancouver-based Mr. Nagra is one of the founders of the militant International Sikh Youth Federation — a group banned by the Canadian government — and is infamous for an alleged involvement in the 1985 Air India Kanishka bombing. His human rights group lobbies for Sikh asylum-seekers in Canada.

Mr. Hamid said he was in “constant touch” with the group about the case.

On June 24, a three-judge bench headed by Justice Raja Fayyaz Ahmed dismissed Sarabjit’s petitions for “non-prosecution,” in other words, non-appearance by the lawyer. The bench also made the observation that there was nothing in the petitions meriting a review of the 1991 death sentence to Sarabjit, upheld by the Supreme Court in 2005.

Following the dismissal, Sarabjit’s sister Dalbir Kaur pronounced a lack of confidence in the lawyer and, questioning his failure to appear before the court, announced she had hired a new advocate, Owais Shaikh, to represent Sarabjit.

Mr. Hamid refuted the suggestion that he had ignored Sarabjit’s case, and said that from 2007, when he was contracted by the government for two years, the case had not been posted for hearing even once.

The first of the four review petitions were dismissed in 2006, when he had not yet been appointed in a government post, and the remaining three came up for hearing only in the final days of his tenure as additional advocate-general. So, he said, it was unreasonable to accuse him of disinterest.

The lawyer, who said he had met Sarabjit twice in 2006, was hopeful of receiving certified copies of last week’s decision on Tuesday and of filing a restoration petition soon after.

But irrespective of what happens in court, Sarabjit’s fate is seen as more likely to be decided by the course of India-Pakistan relations. If the Pakistan government wants to send a positive signal to India, the President can at any stage intervene to have Sarabjit taken off death row.

As it is, the implementation of Sarabjit’s death sentence, fixed for April 1, 2008, was put on hold, first for a month and then indefinitely, as the Pakistan People’s Party took over the reins of government.

The predominant sentiment at that time was that hanging him would constitute the wrong opening signal to India from the newly elected government.

There has been no indication from the government of a change in this position after the Supreme Court’s dismissal of Sarabjit’s review petitions.

Also, the PPP is opposed to the death sentence and has declared an intention to commute the sentences of an estimated 7,000 condemned prisoners languishing in its jails into life imprisonment.

Although there has been no move to formalise this proposal, and as many as 36 people were executed last year, many of them after the PPP took office, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, there have been no hangings in any prison in Pakistan this year.

Sarabjit was convicted and sentenced to death on charges of being an Indian spy and carrying out four separate bomb attacks in Pakistan’s Punjab province. His family says the charges are fabricated, and that he was not given a fair hearing by the courts.