IT'S A COLDBLOODED MURDER

A former Indian spy, who had spent some time with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari behind the3 bars in a Pakistani jail, feels Sarabjit Singh may have been killed in an attack planned by the ISI. "I don't have any doubt that the attack on Sarabjit was pre-planned and was the handiwork of ISI and jail officials though other people attacked him. Now, two prisoners are being made sacrificial goats," said Mehbood Elahi, who was Zardari's jailmate at the Karachi Central Jail for a few months between 1986-87 during the Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq regime. Elahi claimed that in 1977 he was given a blank cheque by jail and ISI officials to assassinate a top Pakistani leader who was then in Lahore jail. "It is impossible for other prisoners to attack Sarabjit. I myself had been in Pakistani jails for 20 years. I know very well that Pakistani prisoners never attack Indian or Bangladeshi prisoners who are kept in separate cells," Elahi told PTI here. Elahi, who claims to have crossed over to Pakistan in the '60s and '70s, was in jail in Pakistan from 1977-1996 on the charge of spying for India. "Death row convicts and convicts of foreign origin are always kept separately and handcuffed when taken out of their cells. So, how is it possible for them to attack someone?" said Elahi who returned to India in the late nineties after serving his sentence. "These jails have very high security and it is impossible to import blades and other things from outside without the knowledge of jail officials," he added. Sarabjit died in a Lahore hospital in the early hours after being comatose for nearly a week following a brutal assault by fellow prisoners in a high-security jail.