August 09, 2007	Thursday	Rajab 24, 1428

MUMBAI, Aug 8: Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt has chosen carpentry as prison labour for which he will get paid about half-a-dollar a day, as he begins a six-year sentence for receiving guns from gangsters, officials said on Wednesday.

Dutt, 48, was sentenced last week for getting an AK-56 rifle and a pistol from gangsters linked to India's deadliest bombings, which killed 257 people in Mumbai in 1993.

“As a normal procedure, he has been asked to choose some work and he chose carpentry,” a jail official in the western city of Pune, where Dutt is lodged, said.

Dutt, one of Bollywood's highest-paid actors — he reportedly earns upwards of $500,000 per film — will be an apprentice in the jail's carpentry workshop.

He can hope to earn about a dollar a day as he gets better at the job and his earnings will be paid to him in lumpsum when he walks free.

The actor chose carpentry over gardening, cooking, weaving, farming and metal-work, among other jobs.

It could take several days for Dutt's bail petition to be taken up by the court, legal experts say.

—Reuters