Bollywood actor returns to jail for Mumbai blasts

NEW DELHI - India's leading Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt has returned to jail to serve 42 months -- the remainder of his five years' sentence -- for his role in the 1993 Mumbai blasts, which killed more than 250 people and injured 700 others.

The 53-year-old actor, convicted by the country's Supreme Court in March this year for illegally buying firearms from the attackers during the 1993 blasts, had earlier served 18 months in prison after he was convicted by an anti-terrorism court in Mumbai in 2006.

Though the anti-terrorism court cleared him of conspiracy during the bomb blasts, it had handed down a six-year jail term to Dutt, along with 100 others, some of whom were given death penalty. The apex court, however, reduced Dutt's jail term to five years, following an appeal.

The actor reportedly gave himself up at a court in Mumbai Thursday, after the Supreme Court Tuesday rejected his appeal in which he sought to delay his return to prison to finish a number of films. The court had in April given him a month's time to surrender.

Dutt is the son of a Hindu father and a Muslim mother and both his parents were Bollywood actors. He insists he procured the firearms to defend his family during the Hindu-Muslim riots in 1993 which followed the destruction by Hindu fundamentalists of the Babri mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya.