Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt, who in the normal course will have to return to prison to serve the remaining three-and-a-half year term in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case, is contemplating filing a review petition in the Supreme Court challenging its recent order upholding his conviction and handing him a five years' imprisonment.
Informed sources close to Dutt said here on Wednesday that the actor was veering around to the view that it would be in his interest, if he exhausted all the available legal options before going back to the prison to serve the remaining jail term.
On March 21, 2013, the SC upheld Sanjay's conviction in the 1993 serial blasts case, reduced the jail term from the earlier six years (awarded by the TADA court in 2006) to five years.
Having spent nearly 18 months behind the bars in three stretches in the past, Sanjay will now have to serve a remaining jail term of three and a half years.
As ordered by the apex court, Sanjay will have to surrender before the designated TADA court here by April 18.
There are two options before Sanjay — first of filing a review petition before the SC and secondly, in the event of his failing to get any relief, a curative petition could be filed on his behalf.
“The actor will take a call on filing a review petition in the apex court in the coming days,” the sources said, while not committing themselves to the imminent prospect of Sanjay moving the SC.
While the review petition would come up before the same bench that heard his appeal against the trial court's order sentencing him to prison, the curative petition would be heard by a larger bench.
On his part, Sanjay Dutt has gone on record saying that he would not seek pardon and would surrender to the police well within the timeframe set by the Supreme Court.
Talking to mediapersons on March 28, Sanjay had said: “I respect the law. I have the highest respect for what the decision is and I will abide by all the terms and conditions the honourable Supreme Court has put on me. Honourable Supreme Court has given me time to surrender and I will surrender at that time. I have not applied for pardon. There are many other people who deserve pardon.
Sanjay had made his stand clear in the context of an intense clamour in various quarters for Maharashtra K Sankaranarayanan exercising powers vested with him under Article 161 of the Constitution to grant pardon to the Bollywood actor in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case.