Actor Sanjay Dutt stayed behind bars for almost nine years as sentenced by the TADA court for illegal possession of firearms during the 1993 Mumbai blasts. During the five years that he served in jail, the actor underwent a lot of changes in his personality and life. The actor’s lawyer Pradeep Rai revealed the actor’s non-glamorous journey and how it affected him. The lawyer also said that Sanjay used to discard clothes after he had worn them once but all of that changed when he went to prison.
In an interview with Lallantop, Pradeep said that Sanjay took his imprisonment in a positive way. He spoke in Hindi and said, “Sanjay Dutt had changed. When he used to meet me, he would say, ‘Sir you haven’t seen me before’. He would also say that now things had changed and his daughter was also grown up. There are many ups and downs in a man’s life but there are one or two important things which he missed out on because of drugs and this case. But even then he didn’t lose patience. The day he was going to jail, I couldn’t go to Mumbai and he called me and told me that he is going in.”
Pradeep further said, “I knew that Sanjay Dutt used to have the habit of not repeating his clothes. He would wear one outfit only once. The same Sanjay Dutt, when he came out, he came with a garment, which was very worn and torn. He showed it to me and said that he only wore this because he wouldn’t get another inside. There were many more issues that I can’t share.”
He said that Sanjay also got some death threats during his time in jail. However, it didn’t change his love for acting. So, when he got a chance, he tried to be part of a play inside the jail but was denied the permission.
“There was a drama happening in jail and Sanjay Dutt was an actor. A man in locked up inside a jail and he wants to do some drama but the jail authorities tell him that they can’t allow him to do it because he has security threat. So because of a set perception he cannot do drama. And when someone does drama, they get remission and the jail time gets reduced. So a man’s art, which he can do and what he has been doing for years, you are not letting him do that. For any other person, this was not a problem. If a person was a player outside, he would play inside, who acts outside will act inside. He had done all the homework but when the time came for the play, he was refused permission,” said Pradeep.
In 2018, a biopic was made on Sanjay’s life, titled Sanju. The film starred Ranbir Kapoor in the titular character and gave glimpses of the Munnabhai MBBS’s life behind the bars.
