Patti, Punjab:
Indian doctors who conducted an autopsy on Sarabjit Singh in Patti near Amritsar last night have concluded that he was attacked in jail last week with the intent "to kill the person."
They said they had kept the cause of death pending as they awaited a report from Pakistan of the first autopsy performed yesterday at the Lahore hospital where Sarabjit Singh died. Provisionally, the doctors said, a severe head injury had led to his death. They also confirmed a cardiac arrest.
The doctors said Sarabjit was a "healthy", well-built man and could not have been overpowered by a single assailant. "There may have been two people who attacked him... the injuries were caused by heavy blunt weapons," they said.
Sarabjit's vital organs including the heart and kidney had been removed, doctors said, adding it may have been done as part of the first autopsy that was done in Pakistan.
Sarabjit Singh, 49, was a death row convict at the Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore, Pakistan. On Friday last, a group of other prisoners had hit him on his head with bricks. He was taken to the Jinnah hospital in Lahore in a comatose state and was on ventilator support till he died early on Thursday. He was cremated in Bhikhiwind, his ancestral village in Punjab, today.
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An official statement from the Lahore hospital said the cause of death was cardiac arrest.
The initial autopsy report from the Lahore hospital reportedly says that Mr Singh suffered massive internal bleeding because of the head injury. "It seems that a 5 cm-wide injury on the top of Sarabjit Singh's skull contributed to his death," Press Trust of India quoted a member of the medical board that conducted the Lahore autopsy as saying on condition of anonymity.
(Read)The doctor reportedly said Sarabjit also had some minor injuries on face, neck and arms.
Officials said a detailed report on the Lahore autopsy would be issued after results of detailed tests were received from the Punjab Forensic Science Agency.
Sarabjit was sentenced to death for bomb blasts in the Punjab province that killed 14 people in 1990. His family says he was innocent and that he had strayed across the border into Pakistan when drunk.