Campaign grows in India to save Sarabjit Singh

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has promised to talk to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf about condemned "spy" Sarabjit Singh after Pakistan's Supreme Court upheld the sentence last week. MPs have said they will debate the matter in parliament.

Sarabjit Singh's relatives claim he is a simple farmer who was arrested after he strayed across the Pakistani border from his northern frontier hometown of Bhikiwind in Punjab state while drunk in 1990.

His sister Dalbir Kaur says her brother has been confused with Manjit Singh, whom the Pakistani authorities want for a series of bombings in 1990.

On Wednesday Bhikiwind residents held street marches in a show of solidarity for Singh. In New Delhi schoolchildren launched a public campaign in support of the man set to be hanged on a date yet to be fixed.

TV stations NDTV and Headlines Today urged viewers to send SMS messages in support of Singh. Pakistan says he is a member of India's external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing and carried out blasts in the cities of Lahore, Faisalabad and Kasur.

Film actor Shahrukh Khan and other Bollywood personalities also rallied behind the condemned Singh.

"He has already served 15 years in prison and purely on humanitarian grounds we appeal for his release," said Khan, whose recent Hindi-language blockbuster film "Veer Zara" centres around an Indian who spent years in Pakistani prisons on trumped-up espionage charges. Singer Sonu Nigam also added his voice.

"There are people on both sides languishing in prisons across the borders and I know from personal experience how hard it is for relatives, friends and children of such men," Nigam told NDTV television.

Singh's relatives have threatened to commit mass suicide if the sentence is carried out.