Zip it Markandey

I like Sanjay Dutt as an actor. I have watched his Munnabhai movies several times over and each time I have laughed as hard as I did the first time. I admire the fact that he has managed to clean up his drug addiction issues, conquer his personal demons and at least on the surface of it, has become an ideal hard working family man. Precisely the reason why I feel for him, that he has to spend three and a half years in prison. Away from the life and his family that he has painstakingly built up and had on track over all these years.

But a pardon you say, Markandey Katju? What for? So Sanjay Dutt has had trouble getting bank loans approved and needs permission from the court every time he has to travel abroad to do shooting his films. So what? Half of India has troubles in getting bank loans approved. Getting visas approved to even visit abroad is a big ask for some, let alone getting one to work there. So let’s face it. Had he not been a famous star, as a convicted felon, he probably wouldn’t have been eligible for a bank loan or a visa anyway. Imagine a normal person getting convicted on even a simple crime like cheating. That is effectively the end of his life. Everywhere he went he would be a person marked by his conviction. And let us not forget that Sanjay was convicted under a far more heinous crime of terrorism. The fact that he has managed to rebuild his life after that is as a much a testament to his own will power as it is to the fact that he has had an extremely influential father. Sunil Dutt did a lot of good for the country. And he harvested all the goodwill that he earned for Sanjay. To ask for pardon for Sanjay based on the fact that his father has done a lot of good for this country is utterly ridiculous. The country has given him a lot of leeway in allowing him to rebuild his life and that is as much as a country can do for the father’s good work.

Mr. Katju has also been arguing that Sanjay has been upholding the very ideals India was built on by promoting Gandhigiri in his movies. In fact one can probably argue that he even took it a bit too far when he offered to give Mayawati a Jaadu ki Jhappi when he stood in the elections himself. But cast your mind back to the movie which re-established Sanjay in the Hindi movie industry after his release from prison. The movie which proved that he could be a bankable star again. Vaastav. A movie about and which glorified the Mumbai underworld. Who was responsible for the 1993 terror attacks? The Mumbai underworld. Not exactly trying to atone for his mistakes there was he? Given the fact that he had been convicted for events related to the attacks, it was probably insensitive on his part to star in such a movie. If you want a pardon based on his Gandhigiri in movies, I guess an equal argument can be made to convict him based on his underworld glorification in movies.

Sanjay Dutt may not be a bad person. He may just have been foolish and badly advised. And ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that is no excuse. He probably understands that himself. Which is probably why he personally isn’t asking for a pardon for himself. However innocently foolish he might have been, he still committed a mistake and if punishment for that is prison, then prison it is.

And dear Justice Katju, if you are so interested in getting pardon for reformed characters, maybe you can start with the thousands of under trial prisoners who are locked up for years in our prisons awaiting the movement of our painfully slow legal system. You can probably make better use of your judicial skills and affect many more lives that way.