Salman verdict — read the fine print

For two entire days last week, it appeared that there was nothing worthwhile reporting by the Indian media except the whole drama over Bollywood megastar Salman Khan’s conviction and subsequent bail in the 2002 hit-and-run case, where one man was killed and four injured.

A Mumbai trial court convicted him on the charge of “culpable homicide not amounting to murder” and sentenced him to five years’ rigorous imprisonment.

As the actor’s defence team, obviously prepared for this eventuality, quickly approached the Bombay High Court with legal luminary Harish Salve moving his bail application and getting Salman relief with a two-day bail on the ground that the verdict copy had not been made available to the convicted star, the social media erupted.

On Twitter, large-scale jubilation against the actors’ numerous fans expressing dismay over the verdict, gave way to bitter and salacious comments about the “corrupt judiciary”.

Expectedly, Bollywood came out in staunch support of this Khan who, unlike the other two mega icons of Bollywood — Shahrukh and Aamir — has lent a helping hand to many struggling and upcoming stars.

Watching the brouhaha on television channels and scanning tweets was both an entertainment and a dismaying exercise. Salman, who uses the twitter handle @Being SalmanKhan, has a following of 11.8 million on Twitter against Shahrukh Khan’s 12.9 million fans. Hashtags such as SalmanVerdict, BailorJailforSalman, were trending with both pro- and anti-Salman twitterati having a free-for-all in cyber world.

The actor’s popularity can be gauged by his simple tweet (“All those who prayed for and supported me thank u meherbani shukriya .”), after suspension of the sentence, being retweeted over 17,000 times and favourited 21,000 times!

Over two whole days, while Salman’s fans and Bollywood buddies said that Salman had a “golden heart” and had helped thousands of people through his charitable work over the last 13 years, and this “one mistake” should be forgiven, all of a sudden not only social but traditional media too woke up to the plight of the victims – the family of the man he had killed was in such dire straits and no help or compensation had reached them.

There were tens of thousands of bleeding hearts for the aam aadmi , the undertrials, who don’t get bail in our “corrupt judicial system”, as both TV anchors and twitterati shed copious tears over our justice system being a slave to the rich and the powerful.

What was lost in this cacophony of screaming and counter-screaming, with TV anchors clearly playing to the gallery while thundering about the “injustice” done to the aam aadmi , were the legal points.

While Salve got the actor 2-day bail, apparently in 10 minutes, on the legal point of the defence team not getting a copy of the verdict, the next day in the Bombay High Court, while suspending his sentence, Justice Abhay Thipsay said: “It is the normal rule that if the sentence is below seven years, it can be suspended after the appeal is admitted. The sentence has to be suspended. We can’t take pleasure in seeing somebody (incarcerated) till his appeal is decided. Even on the basis that he was driving, it is a case for suspension of sentence.” He also noted that Salman was out throughout the trial and it was “nobody’s case that he is likely to abscond”.

Here too there was political correctness of sorts, with the judge admitting that it was “unfortunate” that ordinary people without resources had to be in detention till their appeals were decided.” Amit Desai, Salman’s counsel, while seeking suspension of the sentence, also argued that the fourth person in the SUV during the hit-and-run episode, a little known singer called Kamal Khan who is a British citizen, had never been questioned by the prosecution and this was a serious flaw. It’s not the first time the prosecution has done a shoddy job.

So is our judicial system tilted against the poor? Of course it is; which system isn’t? Take our healthcare system. Don’t you have a much greater chance of coming through a grievous accident or major disease if you are rich? Of course.

And this is true of anything else in a developing country with a population of 1.25 billion and zilch social security. The only improvement we have seen in the last decade or so is the concern and bleeding hearts for the poor extending from politicians’ insincere speeches to politically correct comments in the social media.

But what is really scary, and can destroy this country’s secular fabric is seizing such opportunities to spread communal poison. Here too, thankfully, ordinary citizens such as Salman’s fans scored a huge victory over the more educated twitterati with a right-wing slant and politicians spewing communal poison such as BJP’s Sadhvi Prachi. While havans were held in Varanasi for a favourable verdict for the actor, and surely the thousands of fans who came out on Mumbai’s streets to support their icon had more Hindus than Muslims, once again this sadhvi made the fantastic claim that Salman got bail because he was a Muslim!

At least she is consistent; only two months ago she had urged Indian Hindus not to watch the films of the three most famous Khans! This is not the first time a ‘saffron robe’ has questioned the ‘Muslim domination’ of Bollywood. Mercifully, I didn’t see tweets which said Salman was convicted because he was a Muslim! Probably I missed those, as there is madness on both sides.

Elsewhere another Salman (Rushdie) was given the taste of communal poison, but this time from fellow Muslims . On Sunday, marketed the world over as Mother’s Day, he tweeted a picture of his mother with the brief comment: “Negin Rushdie, 1916-2003. Happy Mother’s Day.”

While many of his followers, friends and fans loved the picture and commented on her beautiful smile, there were hate tweets too. One from @_TruthSpeaker_ cursed his mother for giving birth to a “devil” like Rushdie (which was later deleted, along with other tweets abusing the writer in filthy language obviously for The Satanic Verses ).

Four hours after tweeting his mother’s picture, Rushdie tweeted: “I am astonished by two poisonous messages in response to my mother’s photograph. Time for a Twitter break.”

Welcome to a world where we deviously try to give a communal slant where none exists and crucify a writer for taking liberties with your religious beliefs.

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