The thirteen-year-long TADA trial in 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case is expected to end on Tuesday with pronouncement of actor Sanjay Dutt's sentence.
Ninety-six of the total hundred convicts in the blasts have been sentenced to various punishments so far, leaving Sanjay and his three friends Rusi Mullah, Kersi Adjania, Yusuf Nallwala.
Sanjay was convicted on November 28 last year under Arms Act for possessing an AK-56 rifle and 9mm Chinese make pistol, obtained from co-accused Abu Salem prior to the blasts.
The other three were convicted for destroying the rifle in the foundry owned by Kersi Adjania. What police could produce as evidence was just a spring.
The court accepted Sanjay's plea that he obtained the weapons for self-defence, as his family was getting threats owing to his father Sunil Dutt's work among riots-hit Muslim areas.
The court held that his intention was not to commit the terrorist act. Otherwise, he could have come in the purview of Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act. However, he was convicted under Arms Act, and faces sentence between five years to ten years.
He has applied under Probation of Offenders Act, under which a convict can apply for release on a bond of good conduct.
If Judge Pramod Kode decides to give him benefit of POA, Sanjay will be spared the incarceration. He has already undergone 16 months' imprisonment as an under-trial.
