As the countdown began for his return to prison on Thursday to serve the remaining jail term of three and half years in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case, Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt on Tuesday urged a special court that he be allowed to surrender before Yerwada Central Prison in Pune instead of giving himself up before the Mumbai-based court here.
Hours after the Supreme Court refused to grant him more time to surrender for undergoing the remaining 42 months’ jail term in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case, the actor told the designated TADA court that he wanted to surrender before the Pune-based Yerwada prison instead of the special court here in view of the threat he faced to his life from the fundamentalist groups.
Fifty three-year-old Sanjay, who had been earlier on April 17 granted four weeks of additional time on “humanitarian” grounds to surrender before the authorities, will have no other go but to surrender on May 16. This is especially so after the apex court on Tuesday refused to hear the plea of a film producer, who sought more time for Sanjay to surrender in order to complete two films that are under production.
“The applicant (Sanjay) is facing threat to life from fundamentalist groups and those with vested interests,” the actor stated in an application filed before special TADA Judge G A Sanap, seeking permission to surrender before the Yerwada jail in Pune instead of giving himself up before the special court in south Mumbai.
Another reason that the actor cited for his desire to surrender before the Pune-based Yerwada instead of the special court in south Mumbai was that he did not want to subject himself to excessive media glare as it had happened on similar occasions in the past.
In his application, the actor stated that he wanted to avoid a situation of the past when mediapersons and camera persons had chased his vehicle from Mumbai to Pune, a distance of 120 km, last time when he was taken to Yerwada prison from Mumbai, after the TADA court convicted him.
After hearing Sanjay’s application, Special Judge Sanap asked the prosecution agency CBI to file its say and posted the hearing on the actor’s plea for Wednesday.
Public Prosecutor Deepak Salvi appeared for the Government and CBI.
Sanjay — whose conviction under the Arms Act in the 1993 blasts was upheld and sentence was reduced from the earlier six years (awarded by the TADA court in 2006) to five years by the Supreme Court on March 21, 2013 — will now have to serve a remaining jail term of three and a half years.
The actor had spent nearly 18 months behind the bars in three stretches in the past.
A total investment of a staggering Rs270-odd crore is riding on Sanjay whose seven films are in various stages of production. After the apex court granted him four weeks of additional time to surrender, Sanjay managed to complete some of his work. Now that the apex court has refused to grant any further extension of time for Sanjay to surrender, some of the films featuring him will definitely be affected.
It is not clear as yet as to which of the films he has completed his shooting and post-production work so far. At the time of the Supreme Court upholding his conviction and granting him four weeks’ time to surrender, Sanjay was shooting for TP Agarwal’s Policegiri. He was to complete Rajkumar Hirani’s Peekay and Dharma Productions’ Ungli, Also in the pipeline were Apoorva lakhia-directed remake of yesteryear film Zanjeer, and the third sequel of Munnabhai series produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Raju Hirani and Sher”.