As the off-reel lives of Bollywood stars continue to amaze the hoi polloi, the following piece gives an interesting insight into the stars' sinister brushes with the law.
-Sumita

The law according to Bollywood
by Ankush Khanna

If you thought all was well with Bollywood and film stars, you were perhaps wrong. Madhur Bhandarkar’s Page 3 portrayal of the film industry is becoming the present day reality of Bollywood.

Controversies have always surrounded the bigwigs of the film industry and undoubtedly, extra marital affairs, divorces, remarriages of stars dominated the pages of filmi magazines for ages. But hardly any were known for their involvement in criminal offences and fewer still were actually involved in such cases. Those times have, however, gone and now the stars make more news for all the wrong reasons than their box office hits and overwhelming performances.

In April 1993 when Sanjay Dutt was arrested for his alleged involvement in the Mumbai bomb blast case, it was probably the first case of its kind with a film star’s name appearing in connection with a crime as heinous as a bomb blast...

While some Bollywood stars try to live their characters (as Aamir does for all his films), we do not expect reel life villains to do so. But the one villain, who dared to do so was Shakti Kapoor, who was last year caught on camera asking a young female struggler for sexual favours. Not only was his proposal to the girl ‘indecent’, he was quick to inform her that such a thing was widespread in the industry and that top directors and actresses were involved in such acts...

The offences are neither restricted to certain people nor are specific to a certain type. The King of Bollywood Amitabh Bachchan himself had to apologise for ‘violating’ the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003 (which bans smoking on screen) as promos of his film ‘Family’ featured him with a cigar. That isn’t all. Big B was served a legal notice to prove his status as an agriculturist, for retaining the ownership of farm land that he bought in Maval taluka in 2000 claiming to be a farmer at Jaunpur. The IT department also served him a notice in February last seeking details of Tax Deducted at Source deductions by the ABCL in 2000-2005...

Recently, the evasion of taxes has proved to be a nightmare for film stars like Sanjay Dutt, Sunil Shetty, Saif Ali Khan and Sushmita Sen. Saif’s imported Toyota Lexus was seized by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) for non payment of duty in February last, and within a month Sushmita Sen`s imported Land Cruiser was seized by the DRI for not paying relevant duties. She was asked to pay Rs 20 lakhs to get the car back...

Entire piece, courtesy Zee News