Jail authorities say actor will be treated like any other inmate.
With the Supreme Court rejecting Sanjay Dutt’s plea for reviewing his conviction and five-year prison term in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case, the actor will now surrender within a week before a TADA court. The actor is most likely to be kept at Pune’s Yerawada jail.
However, the Maharashtra prisons department will make a final call on this in the next four to five days. If Dutt is lodged in Yerawada prision, he is expected to be housed in a separate cell with tight security.
Additional Director General of Police (Prisons) Meeran Borwankar, who was in New Delhi on Friday, said, “We are not sharing with media about where Sanjay Dutt will be kept after he surrenders.” Senior officials said no special preparation was necessary for Dutt.
“Dutt is expected to be sent to Yerawada. We have all facilities there to lodge high-profile convicts and it is considered to be safe. Security has been beefed up in Yerawada following the murder of Indian Mujahideen operative Qateel Siddiqui,” said a jail source.
A jail officer said, “As per the procedure, he will first surrender before the TADA court and later will be handed over to Arthur Road jail from where the jail authority will provide him security. Earlier, he was lodged in a Thane jail where he was kept in the anda cell and later he was shifted to the Yerawada jail and kept in separate cell.”
Dutt, who was granted four weeks more time to surrender to undergo remaining three-and-a-half-year jail term, will now have to present himself before jail authorities on May 16. The actor has got only one judicial option of getting relief from the court by filing a curative petition. He can also get relief if petitions for his pardon are accepted by Maharashtra Governor.
“He has no option but to surrender on the appointed day, get in (jail), and then seek relief of remission, which I hope he may get,” eminent criminal lawyer Majid Memon, who defended many of the accused in the case, said on being asked about SC’s rejection of Dutt’s plea.
The apex court had on March 21 upheld his conviction in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case.
However, the SC had reduced to five years the six-year jail term awarded to Dutt by a designated TADA court in 2006 and ruled out his release on probation.
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