PANAJI, India (AFP) — Bollywood superstar Sanjay Dutt and his longtime girlfriend who wed earlier this month have asked authorities to annul their marriage for technical reasons, a court official said Thursday.
Dutt, on bail for illegal weapons possession, tied the knot with former starlet Manyata Dilnawaz Shaikh in a secret ceremony at a Goan beach resort and a few days later held a traditional Hindu wedding in Mumbai.
But their nuptials immediately ran into problems, with a man claiming to be Manyata's husband saying the pair had never been divorced and that they had a two-year-old son staying with the starlet's mother, according to media reports.
Neither Dutt, who has been married twice before, nor Manyata, had filed proof of their divorces before holding the marriage ceremony in the former Portuguese colony, contravening local laws, the official told AFP.
"Sanjay Dutt and Manyata on Wednesday filed a joint declaration... stating they do not desire to solemnise their marriage under the Portuguese civil code, 1867," said the official, quoting from an affidavit filed by the couple.
He said the couple cited technical reasons for their request to the court.
It was not immediately known whether the pair would seek to remarry.
The bride was also alleged to have forged residence documents to marry in Goa.
Dutt, 48, sentenced to six years in prison, was released on bail in November pending an appeal against his weapons conviction to India's Supreme Court.
When he was released from custody, Dutt had served nearly three months of a sentence handed down for buying weapons from the plotters of the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people.
The "Black Friday" bombings were allegedly staged by Mumbai's Muslim-dominated mafia in retaliation for deadly 1993 Hindu-Muslim clashes.
Dutt said he bought the guns to protect his family from Hindu zealots who wanted to wreak revenge for his father's help to Muslim victims of the riots.
The star best known as "Deadly Dutt" for his macho image and portrayal of gangsters and anti-hero roles can remain out of jail until the outcome of his appeal to the Supreme Court. No date has been set for the appeal hearing.
The star has a grown-up daughter by his first wife, also an actress.
Dutt's first wife died of cancer while his second marriage, to a model, ended in divorce.
Despite the guilty verdict in the Mumbai blasts, Dutt -- who recently won huge acclaim for playing a mobster with a heart of gold -- has retained public support and sympathy as a man dogged by a troubled past.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
