The Indian Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a plea of Yousuf Mohsin Nulwalla, friend of actor Sanjay Dutt, seeking a reduction of his jail term to three years.
Nulwalla was sentenced to five years in jail for destroying an AK-56 rifle that belonged to Dutt.
Nulwalla has claimed that he was wrongly sentenced for possessing the prohibited weapon. In his charge sheet he was shown to be in possession of a non-prohibited semi-automatic AK-56 weapon.
A bench comprising Justices S A Bobde and Ashok Bhushan rejected the plea, saying, “You are unnecessarily casting doubts and that too doubts without proof.”
During the brief hearing, senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for Nulwalla, said his curative and review petitions have been dismissed by the apex court, but he is raising a different point that “a grave miscarriage of justice has taken place”.
“The AK-56 rifle which was shown in my possession is a semi-automatic rifle but it’s not a prohibited [weapon],” Salve said while referring to a forensic report that opined that the firearm was a Chinese variant, which is not prohibited.
To this, the bench said the AK-56 rifle is always considered to be a prohibited firearm.
Salve said it is a matter of two years of his life and the court must look into it.
