The Gandhiji way!

So Sanjay Dutt is finally going back to jail. The judge, His honour (excuse me, is that allowed?) Pramod Kode of course had to choose between seeing himself decried on the evening news (which these days, goes on for about 24 hours) by social activists as being lenient to a public figure, and being decried by the rest of the nation as not being lenient to the only public figure who managed to convincingly remind us of Gandhiji's message in living memory.

Well, going by news reports, the scene at the courtroom could very well have been coreographed to oblige some director waiting to finish off a film before the protagonist is rushed off to jail. It seems, (and somehow, reading it in 'the Hindu makes it hard to disbelieve) Mr Dutt, after hearing the verdict, walked back to the witness box with folded hands and tried pleading with the judge (and you thought that could happen only in a bollywood movie) that he had spent more time in jail than with his family (NDTV). Well, to be frank, I think for that one sin, he ought to be jailed for six years, considering that the 48 year old had spent just 16 months in Jail... If he wasnt with family, where on earth was he?

the judge, on his part, consoled him saying that he had 'taken away' just 6 years from his life, and he could go on acting till he was 100! six years people, the judge would have retired by then, and who knows, grown tired of watching Amitabh Bachchan as the omniscient daddy. Oh and yes, and the judge also did mention that he was bound by duty.

So, anyway, pending appeal at the supreme court, the actor is going to jail for 'a mistake he committed 14 years ago'. (Before you laugh at how fast things are done in India, remember that a trial in Canada on a plane hijack in 1987 commenced a few months ago, and had much more loopholes) A few american papers latched onto the words 'with terrorist connections' for their headlines.

Okay, now lets get our thinking hats on. One, do you think its justice, and only justice, is what was done in Dutt's case? I mean, without donning the black robes. Im afraid not. Now dont go gaga about the law taking its course, or that everybody is equal in the eyes of the law.

More seriously, for sometime, I have been perturbed (and their seems to be a huge number of things that dont in the least concern me, that I am perturbed about these days) by the question, Does law, the way it is established, actually give any room for circumstances (as opposed to 'facts') of the case? Lets talk about the Indian doctor who found himself on the wrong side of the by now fabled, 'war on terror'. All he was, and could be convicted was of having unsuspectingly left a sim card in the hands of a cousin, whom he would have known since the younger of them was born. Now look, I exchanged the first sim card i bought with my then room-mate, whom I had known for few months, just because I didn like the number (duhhh!)

How much more common would it be for this doctor to have passed it to his cousin. But there was no limit to the mental torture that he had to endure. So, to repeat the question, does law, stony faced as it is, allow for an arbitrageur to take this into consideration?

Back to the question of Sanjay Dutt, there's no denying he has suffered more than most of his fellow convicts. He had a past. And he was raw meat for a controversy starved nation (hey, Im talking about 10 years ago, when Richard Gere and Mandira Bedi werent at large)

Of course, his peaking career is not a defense in law. His possesion of arms evidenced, as the judge rightly put it, a scant disregard for law. But an uncleared convict is no more free, than a man on parole. 14 years is a long time. And after all, we're all sure he just did something foolish. A foolish thing , which he, Im surer, had no idea carried a sentence of 5-10 years imprisonment.