Release order late, one more night in jail for Sanjay

Dutt, Nulwalla, Hingora, Zebunnisa Kazi and Baba Mussa will be released on Thursday, report Mustafa Plumber & Yogesh Joshi.

The TADA court on Wednesday ordered the release of actor Sanjay Dutt and four others on completion of formalities. The Supreme Court had granted interim bail to six convicts in the 1993 serial blasts case on August 20.

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Dutt, Yusuf Nulwalla, Sameer Hingora, Zebunnisa Kazi and Baba Mussa Chavhan will be released from various prisons on Thursday.

"We received the order late in the evening after completion of formalities. We will go to Pune's Yerawada jail (where the actor is lodged) on Thursday," said Dutt's lawyer Satish Maneshinde.

Dutt's friends Nitin Manmohan and Pankaj Kharbhanda signed a personal bond of Rs 5 lakh and issued sureties of the same amount after which Judge Pramod Kode issued the actor's release order.

Dutt spent the entire day working in the prison's workshop. "Since the release order has not reached the prison, it was binding on Dutt to work and he obeyed the orders," said Rajendra Kedari, Deputy Director General (Prisons). "He worked throughout the day on cane netting a wooden chair."

The court did not issue the release order for the sixth convict, Abdul Aziz Shaikh, because his family did not furnish a personal bond of Rs 10 lakh as per the Supreme Court directive.

According to the convention followed at Yerawada prison, the release warrant of the convict needs to be deposited in a box latest by 5.30 p.m when it is opened for the last time every day.

Even if Dutt's papers had reached the jail late in the night, they would be have been processed only Thursday morning.