The Lahore High Court has directed inspector general of prisons Punjab to allow Indian prisoner on death row Sarabjit Singh to meet his counsel at Kot Lakhpat Jail.
The order was passed after Sarabjit's counsel advocate Awais Sheikh moved a petition against the Punjab home secretary and IG Prisons for not letting him meet his client, reports The Express Tribune.

The chief justice, however, directed the IG prisons to give Sheikh 'one-time' permission to meet Sarabjit on humanitarian grounds. He also directed Sheikh to bring a fresh power of attorney from the family of Singh if he wanted to meet him again.

In his petition, Sheikh had submitted that he is the legal counsel of Sarabjit, who has been imprisoned for the past 22 years, and has been meeting him in jail for the past three years as per the court orders. He added that on September 1, he submitted an application to meet his client, which was rejected on the grounds that "rules do not allow meeting with the counsel".

He said that in the presence of the standing LHC order, the rejection of his application was illegal, unlawful and amounted to contempt of court.

Sarabjit, 49, a resident of Amritsar, had illegally crossed the Indian border and was arrested on the charge of orchestrating four bomb blasts in Faisalabad, Multan and Lahore on July 29, 1990 in an FIR registered against one Manjeet Singh. Sarabjit, who was consequently sentenced to death, has been languishing in Pakistani jails for more than two decades.