BOLLYWOOD superstar Sanjay Dutt, who is in jail for arms possession, lost his final appeal on Tuesday (July 23) against a decision by the Supreme Court to uphold his conviction.
Dutt, 53, surrendered in May to serve the remaining three-and-a-half years of a five-year term in a case linked to the deadly 1993 Mumbai bombings after the Supreme Court reaffirmed his conviction.
Dutt had filed a so-called ‘curative’ petition, arguing there were legal errors in the Supreme Court’s March ruling upholding his conviction.
The actor shot to fame in the 1980s in a string of action movies in which he performed his own stunts, earning him the nickname “Deadly Dutt”.
Dutt, whose parents were two of India’s biggest stars, was convicted in 2006 of possessing guns supplied by gangsters who staged the 1993 bomb attacks that killed 257 people. He was freed on bail after serving 18 months in prison.
He was cleared in 2007 of more serious conspiracy charges in the blasts, said to have been staged by Muslim underworld leaders in revenge for riots in which mainly Muslims died after the razing of an ancient mosque.
Dutt, whose mother was Muslim and father Hindu, was found guilty of possessing an automatic rifle and a pistol. He insisted were only meant to protect his family in Mumbai’s charged atmosphere following the mosque’s destruction.
After the Supreme Court upheld his conviction, the father-of-three wept and declared himself “a shattered man”.
