Citing threats to his life from fundamentalists, Sanjay Dutt today sought permission from a TADA court to surrender in jail even as the Supreme Court refused to grant the Bollywood star more time beyond May 16 to give himself up.
53-year-old Dutt filed an application before special TADA Judge G A Sanap in Mumbai seeking permission to surrender before the Yerwada jail in Pune in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case instead of giving himself up before the special court in south Mumbai.
Dutt, whose conviction under the Arms Act was upheld by the Supreme Court recently, is supposed to surrender before May 16.
The actor filed the application in the TADA court hours after the Supreme Court refused to grant him additional time to surrender for undergoing the remaining 42-month jail term.
"The applicant (Dutt) is facing threat to life from fundamentalist groups and those with vested interests," the application said.
It further claimed that the actor wanted to avoid a situation of the past when media persons and camera persons had chased his vehicle from Mumbai to Pune last time he was taken to jail after the TADA court convicted him.
"The media vehicles had chased the applicant's vehicle for 120 kilometres in the past," the application said.
Judge Sanap asked the prosecuting agency CBI to file a reply and posted the hearing on Dutt's plea tomorrow. Public prosecutor Deepak Salvi appeared for the Government and CBI.
A bench of justices B S Chauhan and Dipak Misra refused to hear the plea of a film producer, who sought more time for Dutt to surrender in order to complete two films which are under production.
Dutt was convicted by the TADA court for illegally possessing a 9 mm pistol and an AK-56 rifle, which were part of a consignment of weapons and explosives brought to India for coordinated serial blasts that killed 257 people and injured over 700 in 1993.
The apex court had reduced to five years the six-year jail term awarded to Dutt by a designated TADA court in 2006 while ruling out his release on probation, saying the "nature" of his offence was "serious". Dutt had already spent 18 months behind bars.
