Over the last few weeks, the news of Sanjay Dutt’s prison furlough has been reported regularly in every sort of media. We have all been in the loop of what has been going on with the actor during his leave. And as the days have passed and the story unfolded, various questions have popped up in relation to this single issue.
Let’s recap a little
On the day Mr. Dutt was released, owing to his status as a popular celebrity, a host of paparazzi had lined up outside Yerwada jail to capture the seemingly unremarkable moment on film. Now usually what we see in such situations is that, any convict no matter what his crime, usually slides out of such a scene in as imperceptible a way as possible. However, when a celebrity is found in similar conditions, more often than not, he is seen to emerge with a victorious smile on his face to a group of loyal companions waiting to greet him outside the gates. One would wonder what kind of feats he has accomplished within the prison walls.
But in Mr. Dutt’s case things went a bit further. Not only did he grace the posse of shutterbugs with his presence upon leaving the prison, he even stopped to lift up his shirt and give them a peek at his spanking new sculpted physique. The images of which immediately spread everywhere, and people forgot whether he was convicted for terror linked crimes or sent on a fitness cruise.
After that day, popular entertainment websites and papers took it upon themselves to keep us in tune with everything the thespian did on his furlough. Thus, in the coming weeks we saw a series of photographs documenting how many parties Mr. Dutt attended and how many he hosted himself.
We are all reasonable here, if a man decides to celebrate the holidays with his friends and family, we are no one to judge. Unfortunately the case here is not that simple; it is not about a man who took a week off work to get close to his dear ones. Rather it is the case of a convict who had been given a ‘leave of absence’ from his sentence to take care of his health. A leave which is actually a privilege and extremely difficult to obtain if you are a convict, and especially impossible if you are convicted on a case related to terrorism.
What complicates the issue further is that, since the day Mr. Dutt surrendered more than a year and a half ago, he has been granted around four furloughs out of which some were extended on multiple accounts, for various reasons relating to his own health and that of his wife’s. While reading this we must all remember that furloughs are 14 days leaves given once a year only to those who are sentenced for a period of 5yrs or more, on grounds of serious ill-health and/or death of a family member. By pointing this out, we do not seek to belittle the reasons behind Mr. Dutt’s need for the leave, but merely laying the path for a different question i.e.
What would have happened if he was not a popular actor, but an ordinary citizen like us?
Going by all the expert reports and legal views out there, we can all be assured that in the absence of that name and status, the furloughs would have all probably been denied. It would not have mattered if we had the right papers or the legitimate reasons, unless we were someone big in the eyes of the public and/or authorities, none of the other things would have meant anything. This indicates the double standards with which the relevant authorities look after its people.
Probe a little further and it is not just the hypocrisy on the part of the authorities which gets exhibited in this case; rather the hypocrisy of our own society too gets exposed.
As a society we are always ready to judge everyone around us, thus every convict, no matter what his crime, whether detained rightly or wrongfully, bears the stigma throughout his life. Let alone convicts, we rarely forgive a hungry street urchin for stealing a loaf of bread. But when a celebrity get’s convicted for grave charges like those of terrorism, we experience temporary memory loss directly proportional to the level of his stardom.
Thus, the central problem with the curious case of Sanjay Dutt’s prison furlough is not he himself; rather it is the authorities in charge and our society at large.
