Chandigarh/New Delhi: Pakistani prisoner Sanaullah Ranjay died in a Chandigarh hospital yesterday, six days after he was attacked in a Jammu jail.
Sanaullah, who had been hospitalised in Chandigarh after being attacked in Jammu’s Kot Bhalwal jail on May 3, died last morning following multiple organ failure, doctors said.
“Sanaullah was declared dead around 7 am due to multiple organ failure,” a spokesperson of the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research said.
Sanaullah had been in coma since the attack on him by a fellow inmate a day after Sarabjit Singh, an Indian prisoner in Pakistan, succumbed to grievous injuries following a vicious assault in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail.
Officials in Chandigarh said the body of the Pakistani prisoner was likely to be flown back to Pakistan from the city. Legal formalities, they said, were being completed in coordination with the Jammu and Kashmir government.
Chandigarh Home Secretary Anil Kumar said Sanaullah’s body would be airlifted to Pakistan after a post-mortem examination and completion of other formalities.
Pakistan High Commission spokesperson Manzoor Memon said in New Delhi that Pakistan was “in grief and shock”.
“We have requested the government of India for an international inquiry into the brutal attack on the Pakistani citizen,” Memon, one of three diplomats granted consular access to the prisoner, said.
In Islamabad, the Pakistani government demanded that perpetrators of the “heinous crime be brought to justice”.
“We have learnt with a deep sense of grief that Sanaullah has expired today in a hospital in Chandigarh, India. He succumbed to the brutal injuries inflicted upon him during an attack in a jail,” said the Pakistani ministry of foreign affairs.
India said all necessary measures had been taken to save him.
“Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, he succumbed to the injuries and died in the hospital today,” ministry of external affairs spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said.
He said India had conveyed to Pakistan that the two countries should sit together and take forward the recommendations of a joint judicial panel.
Asked about Pakistan’s demand for an international probe, union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said: “I cannot comment on this now as no demand has come to us till now. When the demand comes, I will tell you.”
As news came in about Sanaullah’s death, 17 Pakistani prisoners lodged in the Jammu jail raised anti-India slogans.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah offered his “sincere apology” to Sanaullah’s family.
“Although it’s scant consolation, I’d like to offer a sincere apology to the family,” Abdullah tweeted.
The chief minister said those guilty of dereliction of duty in this incident would not go unpunished.
IANS
