Sanjay Dutt: Mother India's son escapes terrorist tag

By John Cheeran
Sanjay Dutt, for long the Khal Nayak in life since he played that role in Bollywood, has escaped the stigma of being terrorist.
For Mother India’s son to be pronounced as a terrorist in a court of law would have been an extreme irony.
Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Sunil Dutt’s and Nargis’s son has come through the vicissitudes of life scarred and reformed. From a Khalnayak to Gandhigiri, Bollywood’s Munna bhai has, indeed, come a long way.
May be there is no other actor than Sanjay in Bollywood who has evolved and grew an inch or two since the day they first faced the arc lights. Last 13 years of incarceration in the wake of 1993 bomb blasts in Mumbai certainly have played a role in that transformation. Broken relationships with women too would have contributed to the churning inside.
There is no debate on the fact that Sanjay Dutt made a grievous error of judgment by keeping AK-56s at his home. And court has found him guilty for illegally possessing arms.
Sanjay, definitely, would have argued that he got AK 56s for self-protection. May be he would have planned to use them as walking stick when he turns old.
It was a mistake that stemmed from arrogance and ignorance of Newton’s third law. It is also an illustration of the still unbroken nexus between movies and mafia in Mumbai.
Bollywood’s lifeline is black money.
Dirty deals and unholy alliances are par for the course and walking the tight rope in real life may become some times tougher than acting or out-muscling your screen rivals.
As I write these lines, Sanjay Dutt’s sentence is not yet pronounced. He may still have to watch the action from behind the bars. Bollywood has lined up Rs 100 crore worth projects for a free Sanjay. The best legal minds in the country are putting together his case.
Though he has represented the common man on the screen, Sanjay has had a privileged background. His family’s strong links with the Congress (I) government that rules the Centre cannot be ignored nor his late father Sunil Dutt’s friendship with Bal Thackeray.
Let justice be blind.