Indian prison guard suspended for 'hugging'
Authorities in India suspended a prison guard and were investigating eight others for hugging and shaking hands with Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt after he was temporarily released on bail last week, a prison official said today.
Television channels showed the police guards smiling and greeting Dutt as he left after spending 22 days in the Yerwada prison in Pune, 160km (100 miles) south-east of Mumbai, following his conviction on a weapons violation.
“This violates the police manual rules about conduct with convicts. A departmental inquiry has been initiated,” said R Damne, the jail superintendent. Prison guards were expected to treat Dutt like any other convict, he said.
Dutt won a temporary reprieve on Thursday from prison, where he had begun serving a six-year sentence for illegal possession of weapons supplied by men convicted of involvement in 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts which killed 257 people.
The Supreme Court granted Dutt and five others bail because they had not been given a copy of their sentences by the Mumbai court which convicted them. The six men will have to return to prison once they receive copies of their sentences, which is likely to happen within the next few weeks.
The actor maintained that he needed the weapons for self-protection due to religious rioting in Mumbai in the months before the March 12, 1993 blasts.
The bombings were believed to have been revenge by Muslim mob members for the demolition of a 16th century mosque by Hindu nationalists in northern India in 1992.
Religious riots erupted across India after the demolition, leaving more than 800 dead, most of them Muslims.
