Mumbai, May 17
Actor Sanjay Dutt, sent to the Arthur Road Central jail here, spent a restless night reading spiritual books, while his lawyer today requested the TADA court to shift him from the high-security egg-shaped cell where he felt suffocated.

Dutt, whose conviction in 1993 Mumbai blasts case was upheld by the Supreme Court in March this year, surrendered before the TADA court here yesterday.

“The ‘anda’ (egg-shaped) cell does not have enough light and Dutt felt suffocated due to insufficient ventilation,” his lawyer Rizwan Merchant told the TADA court this morning.

Merchant further said that the egg-shaped cell was generally used to keep the hardened criminals or those arrested on terrorism-related charges. Dutt, he said, was not convicted under TADA, and was not a terrorist.

Dutt had been sentenced under Arms Act and should be kept in barracks with other prisoners instead of segregating him, advocate Merchant said. Judge G A Sanap asked him to file a written application so that he could pass an order after hearing the prosecution.

Merchant later told reporters that he will seek instructions from Dutt; if the actor was shifted to Pune's Yerwada prison, he need not file the application.

A jail official, meanwhile, said 53-year-old Dutt spent the night restless, reading religious books. He did some exercises in the morning.

Dutt has got permission to carry with him Bhagwat Gita, Ramayan and Hanuman Chalisa.

In which prison Dutt would serve his sentence was yet to be decided, said Additional Director General of Police (Prisons) Meera Borwankar.

Another officer told PTI that prison department was gathering information such as number of convicts, security conditions and presence of inmates linked to underworld at jails in Taloja (Navi Mumbai), Yerwada (Pune), Thane, Nagpur and Nashik.

“We will go through this information and then take a call on whether to shift him. If things permit, he may be kept in Arthur Road Jail. However, the chances of he being shifted to Yerwada appear more bright,” the officer added.

The last time the actor was at Yerwada Jail (following conviction by TADA court) he had undertaken the job of making chairs. As a convict, he can opt for carpentry, weaving, agriculture, or bakery work, as he will have to put in “hard labour”, the jail officer said. — PTI