Mumbai, Mar 22: Baljeet Singh Parmar was a hardened crime reporter working for the Mumbai tabloid Daily in 1993 when he first got whiff of Sanjay Dutt's name cropping up in course of the probe into Mumbai serial blasts.
He was the first to break the story a week before Sanjay was arrested on his return from Mauritius.
This is what Parmar says: "On April 12, I got the first whiff that Sanjay's name was figuring in police investigations. The Mahim police station was the nerve centre of the investigations into the bomb blasts, and a crack team, including AK Patnaik, YC Pawar and Rakesh Maria, was burning the midnight oil to unearth the conspiracy.
"Late that evening, an IPS officer called me to drop a bombshell: “Apke MP ke bete ka naam aa raha hai,” he told me in confidence. (Your MP's son's name is coming up in the investigations).
"It did not take me long to figure out that the MP being referred to was Sunil Dutt. However, I could not confirm it since all the senior officers, including the then commissioner of police Amarjeet Singh Samra, were tight-lipped.
"Late that night, I tried a bluff. I called an IPS officer at Mahim and said: “Suna hai aapne kisi MP ke bete ko uthaya hai (I have heard that you have picked up an MP's son)”.
"The answer slipped out. “No, we have not, as he is shooting abroad,” he replied. There it was - my big story. It had to be Sanjay Dutt.
