Many in the Hindi mainstream cinema fraternity seem to have lost their moral bearings in reacting to actor Salman Khan’s conviction and sentencing in the 2002 hit-and-run case on Wednesday – Salman Khan received a 5-year jail term, after a 12-year long trial, convicted of drunk driving and killing one and injuring four people sleeping on a Mumbai pavement. Bollywood, of course, has stood solidly by him through these years even as Ravindra Patil—a police constable assigned to Khan as a bodyguard, who also lodged the FIR that eventually led to the actor’s conviction – died of TB in 2007. Patil, who insisted till his last breath that Salman Khan was at the driver’s seat the night of the accident, faced pressure to retract his statements, was shunned by his family and fired from his job with the police. Salman Khan, meanwhile, made films and contributed generously to charity.
Some of the reactions on Twitter from Bollywood folk have been downright tasteless. Sample this: Farah Khan Ali, actor Sanjay Khan’s daughter, and singer Abhijeet Bhattacharya both blamed the victims for sleeping on the pavement, with Abhijeet likening them to strays. Actor Arjun Kapoor tweeted his poor opinion of the judiciary, saying it didn’t matter “what any court said”. To be sure, it is no crime to express sympathy for someone close facing some sort of hardship, and there were indeed many mature and tempered reactions, like actress Alia Bhatt’s. However, the tide of Bollywood tweets crying “unfair” and extolling Salman Khan’s charity simply glosses over the fact that the actor did commit a crime and the court, within the strictures of the law, awarded punishment for it.
Also read: Relief for Salman Khan, Bombay HC suspends jail term in 2002 hit-and-run case