One of India’s most popular Bollywood action heroes has been found guilty of illegally possessing firearms but cleared of involvement in a deadly bomb attack on Bombay 13 years ago.
Sanjay Dutt was convicted of receiving three AK56 rifles, a 9mm pistol, 25 grenades and ammunition from a notorious Bombay underworld figure shortly before the blasts.
Justice Pramod Kode told a packed courtroom in Bombay that he accepted the 47-year-old actor’s defence that he took the weapons to protect his family from Hindu-Muslim riots across India. “I did not find him to be a terrorist or capable of destruction,” the judge said.
“He kept the weapons only for his protection.”
Dutt faces a prison sentence of up to three years, although his lawyers said that he may not be sent to jail because he was a first-time offender and had been detained for 18 months pending trial.
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He will be sentenced after all the verdicts have been delivered on the 123 suspects on trial for involvement in the 1993 Bombay bombings, which killed 257 people and were the worst terrorist attack in India. The court has so far found 86 guilty and acquitted 23.
Indian police said that the “Black Friday” bombings were masterminded by Bombay’s Muslim-dominated underworld in retaliation for the demolition by Hindu nationalists of a 16th-century mosque in northern India in 1992. More than 900 people, most of them Muslims, died in the rioting that followed.
Dutt, the son of a Hindu father and a Muslim mother, denied any knowledge of the plot and in recent weeks has made a point of regularly visiting Hindu temples to pray for his acquittal.
As the judge read the verdict, the 6ft 2in (1.88m) star of more than 100 Bollywood films stood in the dock with his head bowed, his hands folded and his lips pursed.
He did not make any comment but his lawyer, Satish Maneshinde, said that the actor was happy with the verdict. “To him, it meant that the blot on his family name of calling him a terrorist has today been washed away,” Mr Maneshinde said.
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Priya Dutt, the actor’s sister and a member of the Indian national parliament, described the verdict as a great gift to their family. “It is the prayers of everyone that worked,” she said.
“We miss our father and wish he was here.” Their late father, Sunil, and his wife, Nargis, were both hugely popular Bollywood stars in the 1960s and 1970s.
Dutt has long been considered the black sheep of the family because of to his two failed marriages, history of drug abuse and alleged links to the Bombay underworld.
The scandals have, however, boosted his popularity among millions of fans, to whom he is affectionately known as “Sanju Baba”.
His most recent film, Lage Raho Munnabhai, in which he plays a good-hearted gangster visited by the ghost of Mahatma Gandhi, has been one of the box office successes of the year.
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The verdict came as a relief not just to his family, friends and fans but also to the Bollywood film industry. “Sanjay is like family to us and it’s heartening to know that the verdict is finally out,” Karan Johar, the Bollywood director, said.
“Everyone knows that Sanju is an innocent man.”
The court extended Dutt’s bail until December 19 to allow him to take care of personal business and to complete several Bollywood projects.
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56
Number of films that Dutt has released since arrest in connection with bombings