Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt would have to go back to jail for three and half years in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday morning, while upholding the death sentence to Yakub Memon in the same case.

Commuting the death sentence of 10 others accused to life imprisonment, the court said that they were only “arrows in the hands of archers in the shape of Yakub, Tiger Memon and Dawood Ibrahim”.

The court said Yakub Memon, the younger brother of Tiger Memon, was mastermind of the blasts that rocked Mumbai on March 12, 1993, leaving 257 people dead and 713 injured.

Reducing Dutt’s jail term from six years to five, the apex court, though, refused to grant him any further relief while rejecting his petition.

The Supreme Court bench asked Dutt to surrender within a month.

The court gave the decision while hearing a bunch of appeals and cross-appeals filed by and against 100 people, including Dutt, who were convicted by the special TADA court in 2006.

The TADA court had given a six-year jail term to Dutt, who has already spent 18 months behind bars during the trial.

The actor was convicted in November 2006 for illegal possession of a 9mm pistol and an AK-56 rifle but was acquitted of more serious charges of criminal conspiracy under the now defunct anti-terror TADA.

After a marathon 10-month-long hearing beginning November 1, 2011, the Supreme Court had in August 2012 reserved its verdict on appeals and cross-appeals in the case.

During the hearing, the bench had for the first time used laptops in the court to peruse the voluminous documents and record of the case and the submissions of various counsel. Mumbai was rocked by a series of blasts, engineered by fundamentalist elements, which also damaged property worth over Rs 27 crore.