Click to play videoMumbai: Tuesday is the day of reckoning for actor Sanjay Dutt. The sentencing in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case could send him to jail for anything between five and 10 years.
Understandably, the actor is tensed as he has stayed home for a fortnight now, cancelling all his film shootings.
The sentencing will not just decide the actor's fate, but also the fate of the film projects Dutt is committed to.
At least three films with a budget of over Rs 15 crore each are likely to be stuck in limbo if Dutt is sentenced to imprisonment. These include Sanjay Gupta's Alibaug, Sanjay Gadhvi's Kidnap and Abbas-Mustan's Mr Fraud, the films Dutt has begun filming but not completed.
In addition to these films, Dutt has been signed on to star in Rajkumar Hirani's Munnabhai Chale Amrika and Sujoy Ghosh's Alladin, for both of which he is still to commence shooting.
Dutt's next release will be Indra Kumar's comedy Dhamaal which will be released on September 7.
On Tuesday, when Dutt arrives at the Special TADA court at the Arthur Road Jail, it will undoubtedly bring back painful memories for the actor who was arrested in April 1993 and spent 16 months behind bars.
The years since his release from prison were not easy for Dutt say his friends, the fear of an impending sentence always looming large over his head.
“As this case goes, there were days when I used to see him hassled. He used to go to court in the mornings and come for a shoot in the afternoon. He used to be pretty disturbed and there used to be frequent visits to the court. I've seen him really shattered and at times sobbing in his van. I've seen him suffer for so many years. I feel it was work which probably kept him going,” says director of Lage Raho Munnabhai Rajkumar Hirani.
Probably the only actor who successfully managed to pick up the pieces of his career and re-emerge as a leading star after several personal and professional setbacks, Dutt is regarded by many as a misguided child-man rather than the bad boy he has often been painted out to be.
"That big build, that persona of being the ‘Deadly Dutt’ that people call him... He's a soft guy basically,” says actor Kumar Gaurav.
While actor Anupam Kher believes that Dutt has already suffered enough. “He has already served time in prison. I'm hoping he will come clean,” he says.
Agreeing with friend Kher, actor Satish Kaushik also says, “The entire industry is going to pray for him because he's the son of a great leader. But also because Sanju baba is a great colleague and a great friend to the industry.”
For fans of the actor who watch his every film, and for his industry friends who swear by his large-heartedness, Tuesday will indeed be an important day for Dutt.
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