From propitiations to the gods to a stint in politics, Bollywood’s original khalnaayak perhaps tried everything he could to garner brownie points, earn some goodwill and to escape the long arm of the law.
Arrested in April 1993, Sanjay Dutt’s father, actor Sunil Dutt, approached Bal Thackeray for assistance in the case. The senior Dutt, an avowed Congressman, is known to have later nurtured a long friendship with the Shiv Sena supremo. The SC granted Dutt bail in October 1995 after he completed nearly two years in custody and he was later visited Matoshree on various occasions during and after the Sena-BJP rule in Maharashtra between 1995 and 1999.
During the intervening years, from anti-drug campaigns to his Bollywood comeback, the actor was seen with a prominent tilak at court hearings, always playing the patient, genial hero to starstruck policemen and hangers-on around the court.
In 2003, his first Munnabhai film, Munnabhai MBBS, gave his image a complete makeover. A national award followed. He also went from khalnaayak to a Gandhian hero in 2006 with Lage Raho Munnabhai.
Following his conviction under the Arms Act in August 2007, he was taken back into custody and did another stint in prison until he got bail in November 2007. The release from jail was followed by a well-publicised trip to the shrine of Vaishno Devi, and then by several subsequent visits to Siddhivinayak Temple at Prabhadevi. He contested in 2009 from Lucknow as a Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate, perhaps hoping that a successful stint in politics would mean assured freedom.
Despite the obvious rift within the family — sister Priya, already a Congress MP, went on to win the 2009 election from their father’s constituency — he stood his ground, for a while at least. He was then appointed general secretary of the SP, but resigned a year later once his mentor Amar Singh fell out of favour with the party’s top brass.
And it’s almost like Dutt saw it coming on Wednesday. He was shooting a song for film Policegiri in Film City when he got a call around 6pm. He reportedly shut himself in in his vanity right after that and came out only when it was time to call it a day.
@DNA
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