NEW DELHI, March 21: India’s Supreme Court on Thursday sentenced popular film actor Sanjay Dutt to a five-year prison term and awarded death to a fugitive underworld operative in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case, saying the crime was carried out by men trained in Pakistan.

Besides commuting the death sentence of 10 other convicts, the court awarded life term to 22 others accused in the case under various provisions of a now defunct anti-terror law, Arms Act, Explosive Substances Act and Explosive Act, while sentencing still others to varying jail terms ranging from one year to 10 years.

The court also set aside the conviction of two accused while upholding 15 acquittals. Two convicts died during the pendency of the case.

Rejecting a request to release him on probation, the Supreme Court gave Mr Dutt a five-year jail term for illegal possession of arms in the serial blasts case. The string of bomb attacks in posh areas of the metropolis was seen as vendetta by Mumbai’s Muslim underworld when large-scale killings of Muslims by the Shiv Sena and its police sympathisers went largely unpunished.

Mr Dutt, 53, has served about 18 months in jail and has to serve the rest of the five years as the court refused to give him the benefit of probation since the “circumstances and the nature of the offence” were “so serious”.

He has been directed to surrender within four weeks.

A bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and B. S. Chauhan also confirmed the death penalty for Yakub Memon, a chartered accountant and brother of one of the key fugitives, Tiger Memon. The court said his “commanding position and the crime of utmost gravity” warranted capital punishment.

It, however, adopted a lenient view for 10 other convicts on death row for planting the bombs across Mumbai, and reduced their punishment to life term. It said that while Yakub and the other fugitives, including Tiger Memon, Dawood Ibrahim and Anees Ibrahim, were the “archers”, these “subservient minions” were the “arrows in their hands” and “their participation in the massacres resulted from misguided notions rather than extremism.”

The court also awarded life term to 22 other convicts under terror charges in its judgment delivered in six parts and running into 2,198 pages.

In its verdict on Mr Dutt, the bench reduced his jail term from six years — given by a TADA court in 2006 — to five years, which is the minimum punishment under the convicting provision in the Arms Act, but rejected his plea to either acquit him or grant him the benefit of probation.

Son of Bollywood couple Sunil Dutt and Nargis, Mr Dutt was acquitted of terror charges by the TADA court but held guilty under the Arms Act for illegal possession of a AK-56 rifle and a 9-mm pistol, which were part of the consignment of weapons and explosives brought to India for the coordinated serial blasts that killed 257 people and maimed over 700.

Mr Dutt had initially confessed to receiving the weapons and his subsequent attempts to get them destroyed after some co-accused known to him were arrested in connection with the blasts. He, however, retracted his confession in November 1994. While challenging the conviction before the apex court, he contended that his admission of guilt could not be relied upon any more.

The bench, however, rejected his argument, underlining his retraction was an “afterthought” and that “confession in the present case was truthful and voluntary and has been recorded after strictly following the law and the prescribed procedure”. The court also corroborated his confession with similar statements and recovery of incriminating material from his co-accused.

After the verdict, the actor’s lawyer Satish Maneshinde said that he had spoken to his client who told him that he was strong enough to go through whatever the court has asked him to undergo.

“He has accepted the judgment. We will go through the verdict and then consider all the legal recourses available,” he added.

The actor can file a review petition against the verdict.