Sarabjit's letter

Chandigarh, Sept. 6: When the officials came to their home early in the morning, the daughters’ first thought was their father had already been hanged.

But what the messengers had brought was not news of Sarabjit Singh’s death but a letter from the death row convict. It had the family in tears all the same.

The foreign ministry officials, accompanied by the Patti subdivisional magistrate, arrived at the house in Bhikiwind at 6 am. They handed the letter and a photograph of Sarabjit to his sister Dalbir Kaur.

“Mum came running and woke us up. ‘Come out, come out. My rab (god) has written to us’, she was saying,” Sarabjit’s daughter Swapandweep said.

“No words can describe what went through our hearts and minds when we saw Sarabjit’s photographs and read his letter,” Dalbir said.

“We cried and we smiled over and over again. We touched his photograph, we kissed him.”

It’s the first contact between Sarabjit and his family since his death sentence ? on the charges of spying and terrorism ? was upheld by the Pakistan Supreme Court last month.

“Main meri maa jaisi behen, bachhe, biwi te saare parivar waalon nu tadap raha hoon milan de liye (I am dying to meet my sister, daughters, wife and all others in the family),” Dalbir read out from the letter.

Sarabjit, acknowledged as an Indian by the government yesterday, gave the letter to two Indian high commission officials last week when they visited him at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail.

“They met him for only an hour or so; and he must have had very little time to write the letter,” Dalbir said.

“But he has asked us to pray for him. He wrote, ‘Dua karo ke jald waapas aa jaawan (pray that I return soon)’.”

“He says he thinks of us all the time and this gives him the strength to survive,” Swapandeep said. She is hoping for “divine intervention”.

Dalbir said she has applied for a visa to go to Pakistan and meet her brother. “But they (Pakistan) are not giving me a travel permit. I will go if I am allowed to.”

Sarabjit has been convicted of spying under the alias of “Manjit Singh” and of being involved in bombings that killed 14 people in Pakistan 15 years ago.

Two “eyewitnesses” whose testimony led to the conviction have now backed off. Shaukat Ali denies having deposed in court while Salim Shaukat says police forced him to give false evidence against the Indian.