Hours after reports emerged that Pakistan was to free Indian death row prisoner Sarabjit Singh, the presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar last night clarified that authorities had taken steps for the release of another Indian prisoner named Surjeet Singh who has been jailed for three decades. Babar told PTI in Islamabad that there is some confusion and it is not a case of pardon. He said, it is Surjeet Singh whose death sentence was commuted in 1989 by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan on the advice of then premier Benazir Bhutto.

Babar said Law Minister Farooq Naek yesterday conveyed to the Interior Ministry that Surjeet Singh had completed his life term in jail and ought to be released and sent back to India. Surjeet Singh was captured near the border with India on charges of spying during the era of military ruler Zia-ul-Haq.
Earlier yesterday, Pakistani news channels had reported that President Zardari had converted Sarabjit Singh's death sentence to life imprisonment and directed authorities to release him if he had completed his prison term. The 49-year-old Sarabjit, convicted and sentenced to death for alleged involvement in a string of bombings in Punjab in 1990 that killed 14 people has maintained his innocence and said that his was a case of “mistaken identity”.