Lahore:
Sarabjit Singh, an Indian man who is on death row in Pakistan, continues to be in coma in a hospital in Lahore after he was attacked by two fellow prisoners with bricks and a knife at the Kot Lakhpat Jail in the city.
Doctors attending to him at Lahore's Jinnah Hospital have informed Indian officials that he is on ventilator and is receiving intravenous drip.
Officers of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad visited the ICU of the hospital in Lahore to meet Sarabjit Singh at 2 am local time today.
"X-rays, MRI, CT scans done on Sarabjit Singh. Doctors carrying out trauma control & await stabilisation in condition before further tests," External Affairs Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin informed via a post on Twitter this morning. He added that Indian officials are in regular contact with the medical board of the hospital.
Mr Singh was reportedly attacked when he was being moved from one cell to another in the Lahore jail. He was initially taken to the hospital within the prison, but after his condition worsened, he was taken in an ambulance to the Jinnah Hospital. He has reportedly suffered head injuries.
Pakistan foreign office has said in a statement that it will probe the incident.
Sarabjit's sister Dalbir Kaur has told NDTV from Amritsar, "I had told everybody he is not safe. This is a conspiracy. The attack was pre-planned. We want Sarabjit to be shifted to a better hospital or they should hand him over to us."
(Read: Sarabjit Singh's life was at threat after Afzal Guru's hanging, says his sister)The Kot Lakhpat jail currently has some 17,000 prisoners though its official capacity is only 4,000. After the incident, four officials including the jail warden were suspended.
Sarabjit was convicted for alleged involvement in a string of bomb attacks in Punjab province that killed 14 people in 1990. His family however says he is the victim of mistaken identity and had inadvertently strayed across the border in a drunk state.
His mercy petitions were rejected by courts and former President Pervez Musharraf.