Amritsar, April 23:

Relatives of an Indian prisoner due to be hanged in Pakistan over a deadly bombing crossed the border between the rival nations today hoping to visit him in prison.

The members of Sarabjit Singh’s family given Pakistani visas to make the week-long trip included his wife Sukhpreet Kaur, daughters Swapandeep and Poonam and his sister Dalbir Kaur.

“I have not given up hope that he will come back to us safe and sound,” Dalbir told AFP

before crossing the Wagah border, the main land crossing between the two countries, in India’s northern Punjab state.

In Pakistan, Dalbir, who comes from Punjab’s Bikhiwind village, close to the border, said her first priority would be to get permission to visit her brother.

Sarabjit is due to be hanged on April 30 after being convicted of involvement in blasts in 1990

that killed four people in the Pakistani city of Lahore.

But he insists he is the victim of mistaken identity and his family say he inadvertently crossed the border in a state of inebriation.

Last week, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee had appealed to Islamabad to spare Sarabjit.

Hopes of his release brightened last month when Pakistan pardoned and set free another Indian prisoner, Kashmir Singh, who had been languishing on death row for 35 years over suspected espionage.

But those hopes were dashed when Kashmir Singh allegedly told reporters days after his return that he had spied for India.

Pakistan’s ex-Human Rights Minister Ansar Burney, who played a key role in securing Kashmir Singh’s release, last week told NDTV news channel that Sarabjit was being punished because he was “an Indian and a non-Muslim.”

“Burney told me he had filed another mercy petition in court and that means Sarabjit cannot be hanged,” Dalbir said.

“I am taking with me some things that he liked to eat. Most important of all, I am taking with me the ‘rakhis’ (cloth bracelets) that I have wanted to tie on his hand for all these years,” she told NTV news channel, referring to the sacred thread a sister ties on her brother’s wrist as a mark of love.