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Sanjay Dutt returns to Yerawada jail
23rd Oct 2007 09.00 IST
By Agencies

After enjoying two months of freedom, Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt , sentenced to six years rigorous imprisonment by a special court in 1993 Mumbai blasts case, Monday surrendered and was sent to Yerawada jail near Pune in the evening.

Dutt, convicted on November 28, 2006 by a Terrorist and Disruptive Act (TADA) court for possession of AK-56 rifle and a pistol under Arms Act but acquitted under TADA Act, surrendered before the TADA court this afternoon, after he was given the copy of the judgment.

After being sentenced on July 31 this year, the 48-year-old actor was taken into custody and sent to Pune's Yerawada Jail a day later.

His lawyers filed an appeal against the conviction and sought bail. On August 20, the Supreme Court granted him bail till he got the copy of the judgment. The copy was handed to him today by the special TADA court.

Unlike last time when he appeared shell-shocked on hearing that his application under Probation of Offenders Act for release on bond of good conduct had been rejected and he would have to go to jail, Dutt appeared calm and relaxed Monday.

When TADA judge Pramod Kode dictated the order that accused number 117 (Dutt) was being taken into custody, the actor did not show any emotion.

Later, after talking to his New York-based daughter Trishala on phone, Dutt greeted media persons and said with a smile: "I wish I am home for Diwali."

Dutt's lawyer Karan Singh said that within a week, a regular bail application would be filed in the Supreme Court.

The judgment, which runs into 4340 pages, has some solace for Dutt as judge Kode has given a clean chit to the actor as far as the conspiracy to carry out blasts of March 12, 1993, is concerned.

The prosecution could not prove that weapons acquired by Dutt were the part of the consignment smuggled in by fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon in January-February 1993, the judgment says.

It says when Dutt got the weapons, the conspiracy was yet to be finalised. It was finalised much later--only on March 5, 1993.

The judgment too refutes the prosecution's argument that Dutt obtained the weapons from Aness Ibrahim, Dawood Ibrahim's brother, and one of the prime conspirators in 1993 blasts.

Had the prosecution been able to prove that Dutt asked Anees directly for the weapons, it could have established a link between him and the conspiracy to smuggle weapons into India prior to blasts.

But the judgment says the prosecution could not establish that Anees was received overseas calls made by Dutt. It accepts the CBI's case (based partly on Dutt's confession) that he had met Anees during the shooting of the film `Yalgaar' but says that it was not because of this "nexus" that Dutt got the weapons.

The judgment accepts Dutt's justification for acquiring weapons, i.e. for defending his family during the riots. "Different human beings behave in different manner during similar circumstances," it says.

Since his release in October 1995 on bail given by the Supreme Court, Dutt had remained outside the jail for the entire period of Mumbai blasts trial.

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