The Supreme Court on Friday permitted convicts in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case to appeal against their conviction and sentence without filing the copy of the impugned judgment of the TADA court.
The order was passed by a bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, Justices R V Raveendran and V S Sirpurkar when the bail applications of Mossa Chouhan and Sardar Saha Wali Khan were mentioned before the apex court.
The bench refused to grant further relief and turned down the bail plea of the two petitioners. The apex court made it clear that it will hear their applications for regular bail only when appeals are filed by them.
The exemption from filing the certified copy of the TADA court judgment was granted when the petitioner pleaded before the apex court that it would not be possible to file the appeals soon, as it will take time to get the copies of the judgment typed and photocopied.
Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam, appearing for the CBI, undertook to file the judgment copy in view of its contents running into 5,000 pages. The CBI counsel assured the court that he would try to file the judgment copy within a week.
Filmstar Sanjay Dutt, who has been sentenced to six years' imprisonment and is presently lodged in Yerwada central jail in Pune, filed his appeal on Thursday along with the application for suspension of his sentence.
Some convicts were granted interim bail by the apex court with directions that each one of them will surrender immediately before TADA judge after being supplied with the judgment copy.
About 250 were killed and thousands injured in the series of blasts that went off in the metropolis on March 12, 1993. 123 people were accused in the case, and it took about 13 years for the court to reach its conclusion.
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