That’s it. I’ve had it up to here with Sanjay Dutt and the various machinations aimed at keeping him out of jail. If there was any sympathy to begin with for the man — not all his troubles have been self-inflicted, after all — it disappeared after that teary press conference he held on March 29 this year. After assuring us that he would surrender before the first deadline given to him by the Supreme Court, he turned around and asked for six more months to complete his films because Rs 278 crore is invested in them. As we went to press, he filed a review petition challenging the Supreme Court decision. And there will perhaps be more such measures.

Sure, I’d be flailing about as desperately as him if I faced the prospect of going to jail. And, like any other citizen of this country, he’s entitled to every legal trick that his lawyers can pull out of their bags.

It’s the hypocrisy, the grandstanding, the PR manipulations and the lack of transparency in this sordid tale that have now gone beyond embarrassing or uncomfortable. I don’t buy any of his current or old arguments and am baffled by the Supreme Court’s decision to grant him four more weeks to surrender.

For weeks, his ardent supporter Mahesh Bhatt had said that Sanjay would take the Supreme Court verdict on the chin and was ready to walk into jail “like a man”. And then came that sobbing performance before the media.

The question is: If he was that emotionally distraught, why did he hold a press conference at all? Why didn’t he simply issue a press statement — a more dignified option that protects you from the glare of the cameras at very private or vulnerable moments? Aamir Khan chose this route in December 2011 when he and Kiran Rao announced the birth of their son Azad to a surrogate mother. They didn’t ask for privacy; they got it respectfully from the press. Aishwarya Rai chose to issue a press statement, too, way back in 2003 after that infamous press conference when Vivek Oberoi and Salman Khan combined to make life hell for her. There are ways in which a star who doesn’t want to, or isn’t up to, facing the media can get a message across.

It’s not difficult to figure out why Sanjay Dutt went through those “I am a shattered man” scenes. Especially since he has (quite understandably) been a man on edge ever since 1993. I’ve heard enough stories of how his nerves would give way on the sets and he would sit sobbing in his van. Clearly he is not a man of great self-control, which makes his decision to hold that press conference that much more suspect. One can only presume Dutt’s spin doctors advised him to extract a few tears.

Perhaps it’s the same lot who keep feeding the media with opportune nuggets about the generosity and camaraderie with which Dutt deals with the less privileged in the film industry. I’m not questioning his large-heartedness with people in trouble; there are many who will testify to that (apart from producer Shakeel Noorani, who is still hounding Dutt in the courts for some Rs 2 crore).

But to play up this quality as an antidote to his serious misdemeanours is a strategy that’s rather tough to swallow. The tapes of an alleged conversation between him and gangster Chhota Shakeel were remarkable for the easy, chatty tone between the two men.

There’s little that is secret in B-Town. There’s much that doesn’t make it to the scandal sheets, but there isn’t much that insiders don’t know. Information is not only power, it is also your safeguard against troubles — minor and major.

The obvious question is: Did all those producers who signed up Dutt for their films not know that the verdict was due? Ditto for all the producers and directors who cast him after his release on bail in 1997. Dutt has worked in — hold your breath — over 80 films since Daud , which was his comeback vehicle. That’s an average of close to five films a year, a big number indeed.

Why did so many producers risk big-time money by signing up Dutt? Did they know something we didn’t? Or, like so many residents of B-Town, did they think they could somehow bypass the law?

This was certainly the case some decades or so ago when the connected, the wealthy, and the powerful felt they could get away with murder. They had a sense of entitlement and the confidence that they wouldn’t actually be sent to jail. The manner in which many of them did get away bolstered that confidence.

Dutt himself sought ‘blessings’ from Bal Thackeray after the latter’s help in getting him released from prison in 1997. He was cushioned to a large degree by the enormous political goodwill that his decent and upright father, Sunil Dutt, a Congress MP, enjoyed. It is a measure of the many victories that media and citizen activism have achieved in the last decade that ministers, industrialists and superstars alike have been brought to book. Now, if only we could do the same for child rapists.

shashibaliga@gmail.com

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