NEW DELHI, July 23: President Asif Ali Zardari greeted India’s president-elect Pranab Mukherjee on Monday but not before the latter’s son was urging his father to use his new job to get Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh freed in Pakistan.

“It gives me great pleasure to extend to you warm greetings and felicitations on your well-deserved election to the high office of the President of the Republic of India,” Mr Zardari said in his message released by the Pakistan High Commission in India.

“We wish Your Excellency long life, health and happiness, and continued progress and prosperity to the people of India. Please accept Excellency, the assurances of my highest consideration.”

Indian reports, however, said that the new president’s son Abhijit Mukherjee had requested his father to take up the issue of Sarabjit Singh’s release with his Pakistani counterpart.

“I know the plight of Sarabjit’s family members who used to come to my father in Delhi during his tenure in union cabinet. Our government should do something concrete to get him released from the Pakistan jail and hand him over to his family,” the Congress MLA from Naihati in West Bengal said. Mr Mukherjee will be sworn in as India’s 13th head of state on Wednesday.