New Delhi: The Supreme Court will hear Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt's appeal against his jail sentence on August 20.
The court on Friday issued a notice to the CBI on Dutt's plea challenging the Special TADA court verdict sentencing him to six years' rigorous imprisonment in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case.
The court said there will be no preferential treatment to anyone and that the court "wants to follow a uniform approach."
"We are not going to pass any order now. We will consider all connected matter on August 20," a Bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan said when senior advocate Fali
S Nariman mentioned the matter for urgent hearing.
The court declined Nariman's plea that Dutt's bail plea be heard on Monday. Some of the other persons convicted in the case have also applied for bail, the court said.
Seeking an early hearing, Nariman said the actor is yet to receive a copy of the judgement and it was not likely to be available by August 24.
The court had said on Thursday that no one gets priority in the Supreme Court and that everyone has to come through the proper channel to be heard in the Apex Court.
The court said this after protests from other Mumbai blasts convicts, who pointed out that similar appeals of convicts in the same case have been pending in the court since before Dutt filed his plea.
The counsel for Aziz Shaikh, another blast convict, had pleaded before a Bench headed by Justice BN Agrawal on Thursday that his client's appeal against his five years' rigorous imprisonment in the case has still been pending when others' petitions, filed much later, were getting precedence.
He made a specific reference to Dutt's petition to buttress his argument. The court then made it clear that the Apex Court had only listed the Sanjay Dutt's case to be 'mentioned' on Friday and only after that a date would formally be fixed for hearing the actor's bail application.
Aziz Shaikh was convicted and sentenced by the special TADA court for possessing a US-made carbine.
The court assured the petitioner that Dutt's plea will not get precedence over similar petitions from others and that there will not be any discrimination in hearing the bail pleas in the Mumbai serial blasts case.
The court told Shaikh's counsel that a petitioner cannot complain about delay just because someone else's petition had been mentioned for an early hearing, the Bench said. "You could also have mentioned your matter for an early hearing," the Bench said while permitting Shaikh's petition to be included in the mentioning list on Friday.
Later, the court did not list Dutt's petition for a regular hearing on Friday. This caused consternation among his lawyers.
When senior counsel Fali S Nariman, appearing for Dutt, complained that the matter was not being listed for Friday despite a direction from the court, the Chief Justice clarified that the Apex Court had only issued directions that the matter should be listed for a formal 'mentioning' on Friday so that it could be placed before an appropriate Bench for hearing.
On Wednesday, the court had made a departure from the practice to allow Dutt's counsel to mention his plea for interim bail before a Constitution Bench for an early hearing.
Accordingly, Nariman had made a special mention of Dutt's bail application before a Bench, headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, seeking an urgent hearing on the matter.
Under normal court procedure, the cases of those seeking urgent relief ought to feature at least on the mentioning list in order to be heard by the court.
Interestingly, the case of Shaikh is somewhat similar to that of Dutt's. Sheikh was also found guilty of possessing a single weapon. His weapon was recovered from a graveyard in Mazagon. Shaikh's defence is that the cemetery is a public place and during the riots many people would frequent it.
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