Sarabjit's lawyer says his kidnappers were 'Pashto-speaking'

Lahore, May 17: Awais

, the Pakistani

of slain Indian prisoner

, has told police that the armed men who abducted him and his son were "Pashto-speaking".

According to the FIR registered by police, Sheikh and his son Shahrukh were intercepted by four to five men travelling in a red pick-up truck and a motorcycle Thursday morning. The armed men then bundled them into the pick-up. Sheikh said the kidnappers did not talk to him or his son while they were in captivity.

The men, who were armed with sophisticated weapons, assaulted Sheikh and dumped him on Sheikhupura Road, 40 km from Lahore. The abductors did not harm Shahrukh and dumped him several kilometres from the point where his father was thrown out of the pick-up. Sheikh told police that the kidnappers were wearing 'shalwar-kameez' and were fluent in Pashto. They also spoke Urdu. "They didn't talk to me and my son," Sheikh said.

He further said police that he did not suspect any intelligence agency or anyone else was involved in the kidnapping. Sheikh needed six stitches for a wound on his head. Police registered a case against unidentified men under Section 365 of the Pakistan Penal Code, which relates to kidnapping a person with intent to secretly and wrongfully confine him.

Sheikh and his son were abducted when they went to a village near Burki Hudaira area to buy land for a farmhouse.

Sheikh was the lawyer for Sarabjit, who died on May 2 after being comatose for nearly a week following a brutal assault by other prisoners in Lahore'’s Kot Lakhpat Jail. The lawyer recently said that he had been receiving threats for defending Sarabjit, who was sentenced to death for alleged involvement in a string of bomb attacks in Pakistan’s Punjab province in 1990.

PTI