Friday, May 3, 2013

Sarabjit Singh


Sarabjit Singh was attacked in a Pakistan jail while he was there waiting for the noose to go round his neck. Pakistan says he was a terrorist and he was found guilty by a Pakistani court. We (Indians) say that he was innocent and his capture was a case of mistaken identity. Sarabjit died in Pakistan and his body was sent back to India. We hear of many such cases in India too. Some ‘terrorist’ arrested or killed in Kashmir and his family and friends claiming him ‘innocent’. We, staying thousands of kilometers away and reading these things in news papers and seeing accusations and counter accusations on the TV have no chance of learning the truth. We watch these things impassively. It is just another piece of news for us.

Now if Sarabjit Singh was innocent, my sympathies for his family. He suffered unnecessarily because of the enmity between the two countries. The government has offered one crore for his family as compensation. He has been labeled a martyr and a state funeral is held. The Punjab CM -Badal and future PMhopeful - Rahul attended the funeral.

As I hear, Sarabjit Singh crossed over the border between India and Pakistan without noticing it because he was drunk. He was arrested and the outcome was unfortunate. What is even more unfortunate for us is the attitude of our politicians who do not think twice before turning any incident into a part of their vote catching exercise. They turned an unfortunate drunkard into a martyr, fired emotions, attended his funeral and handed over public money to the family hoping that it would buy them lot of votes.

I read about people hurling shoes at them. I wish I had the guts to go and kick them.

1 comment:

Anniesen said...

My thoughts exactly, Raghu. There's so much hoopla being made over this, and so much blood lust being expressed, it's good to read someone take a rational, cool-headed stance on this. I think besides the politicians, the media is also much to blame for the way these matters are blown out of proportion.

Annie