‘Sanjay’s plea for probation officer’s report premature’
The prosecution in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case today opposed actor Sanjay Dutt’s plea that the court get a report from probation officer before deciding his application under Probation of Offenders Act on the ground that it was “premature”.
The actor, convicted in the case under the Arms Act for possessing an AK-56 and a Chinese pistol, has applied to the special TADA court that he be released on probation of good conduct under the POA.
On the last occasion, his lawyer Satish Maneshinde asked the court to appoint a probation officer and call for a report on Sanjay’s conduct, background etc, before deciding the plea under POA.
But today, special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam opposed this proposal, saying that “only when the court had decided to extend the benefit of the POA to the accused, such a report could be asked for,” not before that.
Nikam’s another argument has been that such a report is not mandatory, but Maneshinde produced a Supreme Court judgement to the effect that court must call for probation officer’s report before deciding application under POA.
Judge Pramod Kode has now asked both the parties to obtain a copy of the rules enacted under POA. The hearing on the issue has been adjourned till March five.
In another development, the court has received three different applications from several of the accused.
The first one, filed by 58 accused, asks for probation officer’s report the same way as Sanjay has, with a plea that they too be released under POA.
— PTI
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