SC dismisses Sanjay Dutt's plea for review of conviction

The Supreme Court Friday rejected the review petition by Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt whose conviction under the Arms Act in 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blast case was upheld by the apex court.

The top court, while upholding Dutt's conviction under the Arms Act, has reduced his sentence from six years to five years.

A bench of Justice P.Sathasivam and Justice B.S.Chauhan dismissed Dutt's plea seeking recall of its March 21 order by which it had upheld the conviction under the Arms Act. The judges considered review plea in their chambers.

The brief order said, "Application for hearing (the review petition) in the open court is rejected."

The order said: "The review petitions are rejected." Besides the review petition of Sanjay Dutt, the judges had also taken up the review petitions by other convicts.

With the rejection of Dutt's plea, he is expected to surrender May 16 to serve his remaining three and a half year term.

The apex court by its order of March 21 had given the cine star four weeks time to surrender to serve the remaining period of sentence. These four weeks, which were to end April 18 were further extended by another four weeks by the apex court order April 17. Dutt was given an extended period of four week on the plea that he had to meet his commitments for different films under production.

He had sought six months' time to complete his pending film projects which was not accepted by the court.

The court by its April 17 order had said given him another four weeks time to surrender "considering the peculiar facts and circumstances and also various reasons" that he had stated in application for extension of time to surrender.

The court had made it clear that Dutt would not be granted any further extension of time to surrender.

The Special TADA court that had tried 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts cases had acquitted Dutt of charges under TADA but convicted him under the Arms Act for unauthorisedly possessing arms AK-56 and ammunitions. The TADA court had convicted him Nov 28, 2006 and sentenced him June 31, 2007.