A court in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh has sentenced a Pakistan citizen to life in prison for spying and conspiracy to carry out subversion. Ashiq Ali was arrested in the state's Nizamabad district in January 2002 without valid travel documents.
Ali was suspected to be an agent of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency, police said.
His sentence comes at a time when an Indian national is on death row in Pakistan on charges of spying.
Actor
Police had said that Ali was arrested in a telephone booth at Sarangapur village when he was making calls to Pakistan to pass on secret information.
Ali denied the allegations and said he had been forced by police to confess to being a spy.
He said he had come to India to become an actor.
Indian national Manjit Singh is on death row in Pakistan for carrying out a series of bomb blasts in 1990.
Islamabad says he was working for Indian intelligence.
Singh's family says he is a farmer called Sarabjit and has suffered a case of mistaken identity.
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