Dhindsa meet Indians on death row in UAE, assures help

CHANDIGARH - Rajya Sabha member and former union minister Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa has met the 17 Indians facing death sentence in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a Pakistani national’s murder and assured them of justice and full support of the Punjab government.

I met them in the jail (in Sharjah) and I have assured them of all possible help from the Punjab government. We cannot allow them to languish like this and we will fight their case till the logical end, Dhindsa told IANS over phone from Dubai Monday.

I am meeting the concerned officials in Dubai. We are gathering all the details about this case, he added.

Besides Dhindsa, a team of lawyers from a Chandigarh-based NGO Lawyers of Human Rights International (LHRI) also has gone to Dubai to ake up the cause of the 17 Indians.

Navkiran Singh, a lawyer and general secretary of LHRI, said: “We will initiate an international campaign to save the lives of the 17 Indians. We would also try to convince the court to drop the death sentence. We have plans to meet their lawyers to discuss various intricacies of this case.

The 17 Indians, 16 of them from Punjab, were sentenced to death by a court in Sharjah for killing a Pakistani man and injuring three others in January 2009 following a fight over illegal liquor business.

The murder took place in Al Sajaa area of Sharjah in the UAE. The convicted men are between 17 and 30 years of age.