Sanjay Dutt's petition not to get precedence

NEW DELHI: Faced with protests from other Mumbai blasts convicts, Supreme Court on Thursday stressed that jailed actor Sanjay Dutt's plea against the Tada court judgment will not get precedence over similar petitions from others.

The assertion came in the wake of complaints by another blast convict, Aziz Shaikh. Counsel for Shaikh, who got five years' rigorous imprisonment under Tada for possessing a US-made carbine, told a Bench headed by Justice B N Agrawal that though his client was the first to appeal before the apex court, others' petitions got precedence. He made a specific reference to Dutt's petition to buttress the argument, leading Justice Agrawal to assure that there would be no discrimination.

The Bench told Shaikh's counsel Mustaq Ahmed that no one gets priority in the Supreme Court, stressing that everyone has to come through proper channel. The petitioner could not complain about the delay just because someone else's petition had been mentioned for an early hearing, the Bench explained.

"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.

Significantly, the court, which had made a departure from the practice on Wednesday to allow Dutt's counsel to mention his plea for interim bail before a constitution Bench for an early hearing, did not list his petition for a regular hearing on Friday.

This was enough cause for consternation among Dutt's lawyers, leading them to seek and get a clarification from Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan that the petition would indeed be included in Friday's mentioning list. As per the 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.

This means that in Dutt's case, as in the one concerning Zaibunnisa Kazi, the court is most likely to issue notice to the prosecuting agency, CBI, seeking its response to Dutt's interim bail plea. In Kazi's case, the court had given CBI three weeks to file its response. However, the appeal filed by another convict Ibrahim Musa, aka Baba Chauhan, is listed on Friday for regular hearing before a Bench headed by CJI. Chauhan was among the accused who went to the actor's house to deliver the weapons.

He was convicted under Tada and sentenced to 10 years' RI. He too is seeking bail on the twin grounds that his conduct has been good throughout and that the Tada judge had not yet furnished him the reasoned judgment copy in the case.

The case of Shaikh, who protested against discrimination, is somewhat similar to that of Dutt's. He too was found guilty of possessing a single weapon. His weapon was recovered from a graveyard in Mazagon. Shaikh's defence is that the cemetry is a public place and during the riots many people would frequent it.