The Pakistani government has deferred the execution of an Indian man condemned to death for spying and carrying out bombings in 1990, the Foreign Ministry said today.
Last week, the family of Sarabjit Singh visited Pakistan to campaign for his pardon. Besides meeting officials and human rights activists, they saw Singh for the first time in 18 years in a prison in eastern city of Lahore.
President Pervez Musharraf rejected his mercy plea in March, but deferred his execution by hanging until April 30 after a request from the Indian government.
"The implementation on the orders of Sarabjit's hanging has been stopped temporarily. It's not clemency or anything else," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq told Reuters.
He said the government would make a decision on the issue after consulting various ministries.
"There's no timeframe. Now, the government will start a consultation process and then submit its decision to the president," Sadiq said.
Singh was sentenced to death in 1991 for spying and carrying out bomb blasts that killed 14 people, but his family said he was innocent and had crossed the border into Pakistan accidentally in 1990 while he was drunk.
Pakistani officials said Singh was arrested while trying to slip back into India after the bomb blasts.
Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have fought three wars since the partition of British-ruled India in 1947. They began a peace process in 2004. Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee is due to visit Pakistan later this month for a review of the four-year-old process.
But despite better relations, the neighbors remain deeply suspicious of each other.
In March, Pakistan freed an Indian man who had spent 35 years on death row in a Pakistani jail on spying charges.
A Pakistani national, who went to India to watch a cricket match in 2005, was arrested and died in an Indian prison in February this year.