Sanjay Dutt spent Wednesday night also behind bars as his lawyers failed to submit the release papers to the Yerawada jail authorities in Pune in time.
According to Yerawada jail rules, any bail paper has to be received by the jail authorities before 5 pm of the day. If the release order comes after the deadline, then it is opened only the next day.
On Wednesday, the actor’s lawyers managed to submit the Supreme Court’s interim bail order to the special TADA court in Mumbai to complete the bail formalities. After fetching the SC order, the Dutt family lawyers led by Satish Maneshinde rushed to the TADA court here and submitted the papers to the court registrar for necessary action.
The court registrar endorsed the order and asked the Dutt family to provide two sureties. After executing bail bond and giving two sureties of Rs 1 lakh each, the TADA court issued a release memo later in the day. But the Yerawada jail deadline of 5 pm was already over and the lawyers gave up their plans to rush to Pune.
It will be only on Thursday morning that the release memo will be submitted to the Yerawada jail authorities and the actor will be out. The Dutt family has reportedly kept a chopper ready to fly him back to Mumbai.
Fans restive
The Yerawada jail was thronged by Sanjay’s fans but when the first indications that their hero will not be coming out on Wednesday trickled in the crowd, the fans became restive and turned violent.
The police resorted to a mild lathicharge outside the jail to bring the situation under control. It is learnt that the final judgement in the case, dealing with convictions of 100 guilty and acquittal of 23 accused, runs over 6,000 pages.
The TADA court will have to provide a copy of the judgement to each and every convict as well as to the prosecution, which is an enormous task. The court authorities have installed special photo copiers to speed up the task, but it is still not clear how long it will take to complete the job.
Designated judge Pramod Kode has to correct each page and sign it to make into the final judgement.