The Supreme Court today dismissed a plea of Yusuf Mohsin Nulwalla, a co-convict and a close friend of Bollywood superstar Sanjay Dutt, sentenced to five years in jail for destroying an AK-56 rifle of the actor, seeking reduction of his jail term to three years.
Nulwalla has claimed that he was wrongly sentenced to five years in jail for possessing a prohibited automatic AK-56 assault rifle, while in charge sheet he was shown in possession of a non-prohibited semi-automatic AK-56 weapon.
A bench comprising Justices S A Bobde and Ashok Bhushan rejected the plea, saying, "You are unnecessarily casting doubts and that too doubts without proof."
During the brief hearing, senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for Nulwalla, said his curative and review petitions have been dismissed by the apex court, but he is raising a different point that "a grave miscarriage of justice has taken place".
"The AK-56 rifle which was shown in my possession is a semi-automatic rifle but it's not a prohibited (weapon)," Salve said while referring to a forensic report which opined that the firearm was a Chinese variant which is not prohibited.
To this, the bench said AK-56 rifle is always considered to be a prohibited firearm.
It said that when the curative petition has already been dismissed, then how can it set aside the order under writ jurisdiction.
Salve said it is a matter of two years of life of an individual and the court must look into it and the minimum sentence of three years should have been given to him.
The apex court had upheld the conviction and the five- year sentence of Nulwalla, who was held guilty of destroying the weapon kept at the actor's house.
(Reopens LGD30)
According to CBI, Nulwalla had picked up the weapons from Dutt's house and taken them to Adjania and destroyed them.
The actor was convicted in November 2006 for illegal possession of a 9mm pistol and an AK-56 rifle but was acquitted of more serious charges of criminal conspiracy under the now-defunct anti-terror law TADA.
On March 12, 1993, Mumbai was rocked by a series of blasts engineered by fundamentalist elements, which claimed 257 lives and damaged property worth over Rs 27 crore.
The Supreme Court had in 2013 brought a closure to the appeals by the convicts and the state in the case and upheld the death sentence of Yakub Abdul Razak Memon, brother of one of the absconding main conspirators Tiger Memon, and life sentences of 16 of the 18 convicts.
While Memon was executed on July 30 last year, the death sentence of 10 others was commuted to life term by the court which directed that they will remain in prison till death.
