Two senior diplomats from the Indian High Commission in Islamabad Tuesday met with an Indian prisoner facing the death penalty in Pakistan after consular access was granted, jail officials said.

Sarabjit Singh was sentenced for carrying out a series of bomb blasts in 1990 in Pakistan. Islamabad says he was working for an Indian intelligence agency.

Counselor Visa Deepak Kaul and S.C. Sharma, visa attache, at the Indian High Commission met Sarabjit Singh at a prison in the eastern Lahore city.

The Indian diplomats were received by Superintendent Jail Kot Lakhpat Jail on arrival before their meeting with Sarabjit Singh, jail officials said.

On Aug. 18, the Pakistani Supreme Court upheld Sarabjit Singh's death sentence. Since then, his family has been pleading for his release, threatening suicide if the sentence is carried out.

But so far there has been no move to be taken from the Pakistani side to pardon him.

Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Muhammad Naeem Khan said Monday that Sarbjit Singh confessed to his crimes and that the punishment was given to him on the basis of evidence.

Khan said Sarabjit had carried out bomb blasts in the Pakistani cities of Lahore, Kasur and Faisalabad.

The meeting came at a time when India and Pakistan are holding talks in New Delhi on the fate of prisoners stuck in jails on both sides of the border, among other things.

The case has received wide publicity in India and the government has come under tremendous political pressure to intervene.

Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh met with Pakistani high commissioner in New Delhi and asked for Sarabjit to be pardoned on humanitarian grounds.

Sarabjit was arrested in 1990 and was described by the Pakistani authorities as an Indian spy.

One year later, he was sentenced by an anti-terrorism court in Lahore for carrying out a series of bomb explosions in Pakistan.

Source: Xinhua