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ahead and without much pause had
said, “It’s been extremely shocking for
us and I don’t think we’ll be able to ever
recover from it ….It can’t ever be washed
away from our minds. At times, I keep
thinking that this is what we have got
in return for all that we did for the
country. You go punishing a person
who is yet to be proved guilty and
whose family did whatever possible
for the Motherland ….What else to say!
I shouldn’t say anything more about all
this, at this stage, for the case is going
on at the Bombay High Court. Also, any
comments made by me can be played
up by some other vested interests…”
I’d furthered the interview and
asked him to comment on the theory
doing the rounds — that is, Dutt sahib

Sunil Dutt grappled
with misfortune all his
life — fighting against
everything from his
father’s death to
Partition to struggling
to build a life in what
was then Bombay to that suffered, but my mother taught to go, even the peons at the lawyers’
seeking justice for son us never to hate a human being. I have chambers said right there on my face —
been brought up on these values and ‘desh drohi aa raha hai.’ In fact, once my
I have passed on these values to my daughters had gone out shopping and
was hounded and harassed because children.” told me the moment they’d stepped
he had shown sympathy towards a Shifting focus back on Sanjay’s into a shop there was a minute’s silence
particular minority community during arrest, Dutt sahib had told me, “My son and the rest of the shoppers started
the Mumbai riots? has changed after all this …I think he walking out of that shop …Can you im-
Not really refuting the theory, he’d will never be the same ever again. In agine even my dead wife was dragged
added, “Why this propaganda that I’ve these riots, he’d really worked in trying into all this! I could hear people say that
worked only for the Muslims! Earlier to provide every possible assistance Sanjay’s mother was a Muslim. I told
when I had undertaken the padyatra to the riot victims but now he says to these people that you can slash Sanjo
from Mumbai to Amritsar then I sup- me, ‘Papa I will never do any social and me as much as you like but at least
pose it was for no Muslim cause! It was work.’ See how sad it is …Don’t want to spare the dead; or remember Nargis
only for the Hindus and Sikhs. Even in comment too much on the case at this for the work she did for the spastics, for
these Bombay riots, I helped whoever stage but I am of the belief that if he the blind …Nargis worked for all pos-
was suffering and affected. Obvi- has committed a mistake then the law sible people and didn’t work from any
ously, I couldn’t have first asked their should take its own course. But don’t religious angle ….Look what all we did
religion and then got down to helping come up with filthy allegations against for the country. During the two wars,
them! I have always and always helped us. Allegations that I can’t even dream we went to the border areas to meet the
anybody in pain, in need and anybody of …people calling us Pakistani agents jawans and those days, around 1962,
who is suffering. Though I have myself and Desh Drohis! You can imagine when we were financially hard up I’d
been a victim of the Partition and with how I felt. Those days wherever I used donated

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