Since the time a judgement was pronounced for Sanjay Dutt in the TADA court on Tuesday, July 31, 2007, the most generated reaction was ‘I am feeling sorry for Sanjay Dutt. Isn’t the punishment a tad too harsh?’

Our judiciary has seen many cases of innocent people getting framed and serving sentences, and hardened criminals being discharged dutifully from lack of evidences. And yet very rarely does one get to see so much of public sympathy for a person, who had mocked the entire system when he had connived with the underworld to obtain an assault rifle, AK56, some magazines and a pistol.

Sanjay Dutt’s counsel has claimed the incident as a ‘mistake’ stemming from a ‘need to protect one’s family’. Can acquiring, keeping and later destroying an assault rifle be called a ‘mistake’? Is everything fair when done in the name of a ‘need to protect one’s family’? And getting a six-year jail term for this is unfair? Should we let someone make a mockery of our system, even if we all love him? Yes, he does have a tremendous good will due to his screen image. From this can we really conclude that he bears no ill will towards people? A man who keeps an AK56 at home, isn’t as likely to use it if need comes? Why would someone risk keeping such a weapon at home, and later get it destroyed, if he had no plans of using it? An AK 56 is, after all, meant to kill.

Dutt had the best counsel money can buy. He had all the resources to fight a lengthy court battle. In a way he represents a glorious example of equality in the eyes of law. For many unfortunate others, justice delayed represents justice denied. In Dutts’s case, it was a fair battle. Only the result of the battle was not in his favour.

From a purely personal viewpoint, I think Dutt should consider him to be lucky. Keeping an assault weapon can get you a sentence of a minimum of five years. Being a son of an upright political leader like Sunil Dutt, he should have known better. He was 34 years old when he procured the rifle. One cannot even dismiss that as youthful exuberance. Once Sanjay Dutt is back, he’ll be in the same social rung, and financially or socially, life will be just the same, as it was before his sojourn in jail. It is far more difficult to be a common man, and go through all such things, and try to get a life back, almost impossible in fact. But celebrities do have it easy.