Munnabhai in Jail

On 31st July 2007, after a wait of 13 years, the verdict was finally out on Sanjay Dutt. He was handed with a six-year jail term in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case by a special court in Mumbai. That led to mourning across the nation. My mom called me up, her voice choking with sorrow, to give me the news. I too felt very bad.

What followed was thousands of hours across channels on television, questioning the judgement. People have mixed opinion about the issue but majority is feeling bad. Now that is natural. If a person known to you is going to jail then you will always feel bad about that. I will not want it for anyone. After all depriving a human being from freedom is the worst punishment that one can give. The person in question over here is Sanjay Dutt. He is a public figure and everyone knows and loves him.

But I have two very different opinion about all this. I am usually bad with numbers but i think there were around 100 who were charged and 94 of them have been convicted. Do we know the story of all of them? No body is questioning the judgement against the rest 93 of them. I am not saying that we should set all of them free. They must have done something wrong but so had Sanjay Dutt. All of us are saying that Sanjay Dutt has learnt his lesson in last 13 years but what do we know about others. At the end of the day, the statue of justice is blindfolded and the justice should be the same for all. Now thats one way of looking at it. Going by that, at least I am okay with the judgement against Sanjat Dutt.

But there is another way to look at it. There was a sub-inspector (Vijay Patil) who was guilty of taking bribe and letting the arms get into Mumbai. These were the arms that were used in the Bombay blasts. I am not very sure but I think he got a lifer for that crime. Now compared to Sanjay Dutt's crime, the enormity of Patil's crime was much bigger. In my opinion, he deserved a capital punishment. Then, if you look at our beloved political leaders, they get away with scams worths hundreds and thousands of crores. Do we know of a single "national level" politician who has been convicted and put into jail? May be Shibu Soren is one but what happened to other cases/scams? Compared to all that, Sanjay Dutt's crime was just a mistake. Seems justice is not same for all!!!!