Blame it on Uncle Sam. Sanjay Dutt would not have had his Chinese-made AK-56 but for the US anti-Communist policy. The actor's main offence was the illegal possession of that lethal weapon.
It was the copious supply of AK-56 and other sophisticated weapons to the Afghan Mujahideens in the Eighties — fighting the occupying Soviet troops -- that created a flourishing market of these weapons in South Asia, making it possible for Dutt's underworld contacts to get him the weapon systems.
The arms that spelt the doom for Dutt were supplied to him by members of the underworld, including Abu Salem. The easy access they had to such sophisticated weapons was the gross and disturbing impact of the US policy turn Afghanistan into Russia 's Vietnam, flooding the Mujahideens with arms and ammunition to fight the Communist regime in Kabul.
The sophisticated arms that CIA brought into Afghanistan throughout the 80s via Pakistan changed the South Asian underworld landscape forever. The dons of Mumbai and criminal gangs elsewhere in the region graduated from country-made pistols to deadly Kalashnikovs. One of those, a Chinese made AK-56, a pistol and grenades made their way into the Dutt household.
The Americans and Saudi Arabians pumped in billions of dollars, in cash and arms, into Pakistan. The ISI then distributed them to Mujahideen groups fighting the Russian forces in Afghanistan. Among them was Osama bin Laden. But the CIA soon lost control on arms flow.
The sophisticated guns, grenades and other ammunitions spilled over into local markets of Pakistan, into the underworld of Mumbai and into the hands of many of South Asia’s gangsters. While the world struggles to find a way to ward off the raqing Islamic jihad, for South Asia the battle is against the massive upgrade in weaponry, especially small arms brought in by CIA operations.
