May 15- Actor Sanjay Dutt on Wednesday decided to withdraw a plea filed in a TADA court in which he had sought that he be allowed to surrender before Yerwada jail in Pune instead of giving himself up before the designated TADA court in south Mumbai.
The Bollywood superstar has to surrender by May 16 and undergo the remaining 42 months jail term in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case.
Dutt had filed the application in the TADA court, on Tuesday, hours after the Supreme Court refused to grant him additional time to surrender.
The apex court was hearing a petition filed by a film producer, who sought time for Dutt to complete his under-production films.
On May 10, the apex court had dismissed Dutt’s plea seeking review of its judgement on his conviction and five-year jail term.
53-year-old Dutt was earlier granted four weeks more time to surrender to undergo the remaining jail term.
The Supreme Court, on March 21, had upheld his conviction in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, which it said was engineered by underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and others with the involvement of Pakistan’s ISI.
However, the apex court had reduced to five years the six-year jail term awarded to Dutt by a designated TADA court in 2006 while ruling out his release on probation, saying the “nature” of his offence was “serious”.
Dutt was convicted by the TADA court for illegally possessing a 9 mm pistol and an AK-56 rifle, which were part of a consignment of weapons and explosives brought to India for coordinated serial blasts that killed 257 people and injured over 700 in 1993.
