NEW DELHI, 3 October — Demonstrators are expected to gather today in parts of India outside cinemas showing films featuring actor Salman Khan, who has become the unwilling star in one of the nastier scandals to uncoil from the gilded but murky world of Bollywood.
The 36-year-old Khan has made daily front page news in India since his silver Toyota Range Cruiser bounced up onto a pavement as he was heading home from a party and careered into a huddle of laborers sleeping outside.
One man was killed; four injured.
India’s gargantuan film industry regularly throws up lurid stories of murder, extortion, and mob connections but these allegations have attracted particular attention, not least because the two principal players — the alleged killer and the victim — come from the extremes of Indian society.
Khan’s fame — the result of at least 30 movies, including some major hits — has earned him a place among the super-rich. He enjoys boasting to interviewers about how he jets first-class to London to stock up his wardrobe with the latest from Armani and Versace. He is, however, better known to his worldwide Internet fan club for his muscle-bound (and carefully shaved) bare chest, tight jeans, and for giving off the appropriately pampered and sulky air of a brooding action hero.
Nooru Bahra — the 38-year-old man who died under the wheels of Khan’s Toyota just before 3 a.m. on Saturday — might as well have come from another planet. He is one of a host of laborers drawn from the countryside to the big city in the hope of earning enough money to feed their families, a man who could reasonably expect to end his days in abject and anonymous poverty, without ever encountering a film star let alone an Armani suit.
He worked in a sweltering bakery in Mumbai (Bombay), earning the equivalent of £1.80 a day. Fatally as it turned out, he slept on the street at night because of the steamy nighttime temperatures indoors.
Practically every aspect of the case has spawned dispute and controversy, so much so that civil rights activists and others are beginning to jump on the bandwagon.
The local police have drawn severe criticism for allowing the actor to be bailed for a mere Rs. 950 despite the fact that he left the scene of the crash and did not surrender himself until eight hours afterward. His critics have pointed out that the country’s jails are crammed with people — the poor, usually — unable to pay bail money, despite facing far lesser charges.
Activists with the ruling BJP party’s youth wing have weighed in. They told the Calcutta-based "Telegraph" newspaper that they would, from today, hold demonstrations in and around Bombay outside cinemas showing Salman Khan films demanding his immediate arrest.
The outcry has prompted authorities in the state of Maharashtra to order an inquiry into the police handling of the affair. Although reportedly taken some 10 hours after the crash, blood samples have, according to police officials, confirmed that Khan had been drinking.
The police say he was at the wheel. His lawyers deny it, saying the vehicle was driven by a bodyguard. But the tireless India press have not been convinced; accounts — unproven, it must be stressed — have emerged alleging murky attempts to bribe and bully eye-witnesses.
Khan is not helped by his curriculum vitae which established him as one of Bollywood’s bad boys some time ago. He is already fighting criminal charges in Rajasthan for allegedly poaching a protected black buck deer in a wildlife sanctuary. Two years ago, Bollywood — and its feral band of scribes — was abuzz over unproven allegations that he had mafia ties, after the Bombay police interviewed him for six hours on the subject.
But this case has touched a nerve for another reason. The newspapers have had a particularly acidic tone — he has been branded "spoilt" and "arrogant" — which seemed to be borne of a general feeling that India’s celebrities, police and politicians live by different laws, and that India is growing tired of it. (The Independent)
