Sarabjit Singh won't be sent abroad for treatment: Pak panel

(This story originally appeared in on Apr 29, 2013)

LAHORE: The medical board, constituted for the treatment of Sarabjit Singh, an Indian prisoner who is on death-row in Pakistan, said on Monday that there was no need for sending him abroad for treatment.

Singh was brutally assaulted by two prison inmates in Lahore's Kot Lakhpat jail on Friday and was brought into the city's Jinnah Hospital in a state of unconsciousness. Earlier on Friday, a medical board supervising the treatment of Singh was directed by the government to decide whether to send him abroad or to bring foreign neurosurgeons for his treatment to operate on his internal head injuries.

Hospital sources told TOI that the four-member medical board, comprising Dr Shaukat Mehmud, Prof Zafar Iqbal, Prof Anjum Habib and Prof Naeem Kasuri, examined Singh in the hospital's intensive care unit on Monday morning and took his medical records and the latest CT scan reports to examine whether he needed treatment abroad or foreign neurosurgeons for his treatment in Lahore. After an hour long meeting, the panel of experts decided to continue treating Singh in the hospital.

Sources quoting doctors at the hospital's ICU said that Singh was still in a state of coma but the readings on a medical monitor- pulse rate, blood pressure and the saturated percentage of oxygen in blood- were satisfactory. "Doctors are optimistic that Sarabjit will gain consciousness," sources said adding, "ss soon as he gains stability, his internal head injuries will be operated upon."