Sanjay Dutt

New Delhi, Aug. 14: Sanjay Dutt’s lawyer today told the Supreme Court there was no evidence linking the actor to the 1993 Bombay blasts and that his alleged acquisition of illegal arms predated the terror attack.

Sanjay, sentenced to six years under the Arms Act in connection with the blasts, has challenged his July 2006 conviction in the apex court. He is out on bail and the verdict will determine whether he has to return to jail to serve out the remaining four-and-a-half years of his term.

The actor was not in the courtroom today but his sister Priya Dutt, a Lok Sabha member, sat through the daylong proceedings unobtrusively.

Sanjay’s lawyer Harish Salve argued that his client would not have known the difference between an air gun and an AK-56. “If they (the co-accused) had shown him an air gun and claimed it was an AK-56, he would have said, ‘so be it’,” he said.

“There is not a single nexus with the conspiracy or the conspirators. He may have only procured the arms for protection of himself and his family. The threat was felt due to the (preceding) riots and not the blasts,” Salve told the bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and J. Chelameswar.

The lawyer stressed that no arms were ever recovered from the actor’s possession and that no one had seen the weapons. Sanjay was convicted on the basis of co-accused Samir Hingora’s confession that he had kept the weapons in his vehicle for the actor.

Salve denied any links or friendship between the actor and underworld dons Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon. He did not deny that while shooting in Dubai shortly before the blasts, Sanjay, along with the rest of the film unit, had attended a party hosted by Dawood.