In the 1993 serial blasts case, the arrest of actor Sanjay Dutt was an accidental windfall for Crime Branch officers who were looking for footsoldiers of main accused Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon. It was the arrest of Ibrahim Musa Chauhan that, for the first time, revealed Sanjay’s link to the case.

Chauhan, arrested on April 1, 1993 and accused of distributing and storing arms and ammunition smuggled in February 1993, told the police that a part of the consignment was kept at Sanjay’s residence.

“Initially, we did not believe him (Chauhan) and I questioned him again. He...named Sameer Ahmed Hingora and Hanif Lakdawala, saying they accompanied him when the weapons were supplied to Sanjay’s house,” recalls a senior police official, who was then a DCP spearheading the probe.

The police tracked down Hingora and Lakdawala on April 12, 1993. Proprietors of Magnum Videos, both men said Abu Salem had asked them to keep some AK-56 assault rifles, live cartridges and hand grenades. They said they refused as they were “having problems with the landlord’’.

“But when Salem insisted, they spoke to Dawood’s brother Anees and it was Anees who asked them to take the weapons to Sanjay’s house. A total of three AK-56 rifles, cartridges, 25 hand grenades and a 9-mm semi-automatic pistol were removed from the cavity of the van and stored in Sanjay’s house,” says the officer.

On April 19, the then DCP (Traffic) arrested Sanjay after his arrival from Mauritius. “We arrested him as he alighted from the aircraft and brought him to the Crime Branch office. He confessed to us. We had records of the telephone calls he had made to Anees during the time he had procured the weapons,’’ says the officer.