Sanjay Dutt stretches the truth

On Thursday night, actor-turned-politician Sanjay Dutt told a TV channel that he hadn’t committed any crime, and that policemen had used third degree methods to make him confess that he had procured an AK-47 from one of Dawood Ibrahim’s men.

As I was witness to all that was going on in the week leading up to his arrest in 1993 under Tada, I knew his statement didn’t fit the facts. I was the reporter who wrote a week before his arrest that Sanjay owned an illegal gun.

So I am fairly certain that he was never beaten up when under detention. On the other hand, the cops treated him with kid gloves, even as they ribbed him about his unholy relationship with the underworld.

A few days before his arrest on April 19, 1993, Sanjay had, in fact, called me up from Mauritius and confessed that he did have the gun in his possession. He wanted to know the legal consequences if he was arrested.

On April 12, I got my first whiff that Sanjay’s name was figuring in police investigations. The Mahim police station was the nerve centre of the investigations into the bomb blasts, and a crack team, including AK Patnaik, YC Pawar and Rakesh Maria, was burning the midnight oil to unearth the conspiracy.

Late that evening, an IPS officer called me to drop a bombshell: “Apke MP ke bete ka naam aa raha hai,” he told me in confidence. (Your MP’s son’s name is coming up in the investigations).

It did not take me long to figure out that the MP being referred to was Sunil Dutt. However, I could not confirm it since all the senior officers, including the then commissioner of police Amarjeet Singh Samra, were tight-lipped.  

Late that night, I tried a bluff. I called an IPS officer at Mahim and said: “Suna hai aapne kisi MP ke bete ko uthaya hai (I have heard that you have picked up an MP’s son)”.

The answer slipped out. “No, we have not, as he is shooting abroad,” he replied. There it was - my big story. It had to be Sanjay Dutt.

On April 13, enquiries at Sunil Dutt’s residence and office revealed that the MP was out of the country. I got in touch with Suresh Shetty (now a minister in the state cabinet), who was very close to Dutt, and told him I needed to talk to the MP urgently.

Shetty called back and said that Dutt senior was in Hamburg, Germany. I contacted Jay Ullal, a Hamburg-based Stern magazine photographer, who was a good friend of Sunil Dutt. Ullal said that Dutt had left for London and did not know how to contact him. I again called Shetty and told him why I wanted to talk to Dutt. Shetty was taken aback, but promised to get in touch with him, and call me back.

Two days went by and I was worried that someone else might get the story. But patience paid off. Early on April 14, I received a call from Sanjay Dutt, who said he was shooting in Mauritius, and wanted to know about the police case against him.

I told him that his friends Samir Hingora and Yusuf Nulwala had squealed on him. “Oh, my God,” said Dutt, and disconnected. Two hours later, he called again, wanting to know what was in store for him if he got caught. I told him that if he surrendered with the weapons, he would be charged under the Arms Act and could get bail. But if the police arrested him and recovered the weapons, he could be charged under Tada — without bail.

Late that night he called up again and sought the residence number of commissioner Samra, which I gave him. At the same time, I rang Samra and informed him about my conversation with Sanjay. He confirmed that Sanjay had spoken to him, but refused to say anything further.

The next day, I finally filed the story, “Sanjay has an AK-56.” The same evening I received a Rs 1crore legal notice from Ram Jethmalani’s office, asking me to prove the facts or face consequences.

For the next four days, the police neither denied nor confirmed the story. On April 19, 1993, Dutt was arrested from Sahar International airport, moments after he had landed from Mauritius. After the mandatory medical check-up, Sanjay was brought to the Crime Branch office and made to sit in a small, dingy room, which in those days, was used to interrogate not-so-hardened criminals.

The room had a door on each of its four walls, which could only be locked from the outside. There was a table in the centre of the room with a cane chair on one side and a wooden stool placed on the opposite side. There was no fan. Only one light illuminated the room.

When this reporter met him there, the movie star looked terrified. His face was ashen while his eyes looked swollen. Apparently, he had wept a lot and hadn’t slept. Sanjay realised it was tough to fall asleep without the comfort of a pillow. Worse still, the cops did not allow him to smoke. The first two days were an altogether new experience for him. The other detainees poked fun at him.

Lapsing into his past, he recalled his school days at Sanawar near Shimla and how he got addicted to drugs. He also talked about the disturbed atmosphere at home where his mother Nargis Dutt suffered from cancer and father Sunil Dutt would scold him for being indisciplined.

But for Sanjay, it appeared to be a case of wisdom dawning late. His penitence was obvious even as he was at pains to explain how he had struggled in the film industry. Sanjay wept like a child as he talked about his experiences.