Bollywood personalities who went to jail

Salman Khan is not the first Bollywood personality to have lost his or her celebrity cover after committing a crime, because the likes of Sanjay Dutt, Mumtaz Jehan alias Madhubala, Saif Ali Khan, John Abraham, Aditya Pancholi, Fardeen Khan, Monica Bedi, Leena Maria Paul, Shiney Ahuja and director Madhur Bhandarkar etc have already flashed headlines in Indian media by being jail inmates.
Due to turn 50 on December 27 this year, Salman Khan faces prison after being convicted of running over five homeless men, meaning thereby that he is charged in a case involving culpable homicide, which is defined by Section 299 of the Indian Penal Code.
Born Abdul Rashid Salim Salman Khan to renowned Indian screenwriter Salim Khan and his first wife Sushila Charak, his stepmother happens to be the former Anglo-Burmese Bollywood actress-cum-dancer Helen Jairag Richardson (born 1938).
Apart from Salman, the Indian actors who have got into serious trouble with criminal charges include:
Sanjay Balraj Dutt (born 1959), the son of film actors Sunil Butt and Nargis, was arrested under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) in April 1993, due to terrorist interactions, and illegal possession of a 9mm pistol and an AK-56 assault rifle.
Like Salman, he too is half Muslim and half Hindu.
Sanjay Dutt had said in court he that he had bought a pistol from Indian underworld don Dawood Ibrahim’s close aide Abdul Qayyum in Dubai in September 1992. This statement had led to Qayyum’s arrest also.
After spending 18 months in jail, he was granted bail in April 1995. Re-arrested in December 1995, he was again released on bail in April 1997.
(References: Times of India, Economic Times, BBC, Rediff, NDTV, Ibnlive, Reuters, the Hindustan Times and the Indian Express)
On July 31, 2007, Sanjay was sentenced to six years rigorous imprisonment. He had appealed against the sentence and was granted interim bail on August 20, 1997.
In October 2007, Sanjay Dutt was

back in jail but again applied for bail. In November 2007, he was granted bail by the Indian Supreme Court, but in March 2013, the same court had upheld the verdict of the TADA court. However, Sanjay’s sentence was shortened to five years. He was given a month to surrender before the authorities though.
On May 10, 2013, the Indian Supreme Court rejected Sanjay Dutt’s review petition for the reconsideration of his conviction and had asked him to surrender on the stipulated date. Sanjay abided by the court order and had surrendered to the Mumbai Police on May 16, 2013.
Sanjay Dutt, who had co-hosted the fifth session of the Indian reality show “Big Boss” along with Salman Khan from October 2, 2011 to January 7, 2012, was paroled from December 21, 2013.
The parole was extended three times until March 2014. Currently he is back in prison after his parole had ended.
One of the prettiest Indian actresses ever Mumtaz Jehan alias Madhubala (1933-1969) was sent behind bars by a court for declining to act in a 1957 movie “Naya Daur” despite having taken money in advance from the film’s director B.R.Chopra. The all-time great Bollywood star Dilip Kumar had testified against Madhubala and her father in favour of the director B.R.Chopra in court. This had struck a fatal blow to the Dilip-Madhubala relationship as it ended any chance of reconciliation between the two most famous actors.
Saif Ali Khan (born August 1970), husband of Kareena Kapoor, was handcuffed in February 2012 for beating up a man in Mumbai’s Taj Hotel. The victim, Iqbal Sharma, who had suffered a fractured nose, had filed a police complaint and this son of the late Indian Cricket captain Nawab Mansoor Ali Khan Patudi and actress Sharmila Tagore was hence jailed for a few hours in an Attempt to Murder charge.
Earlier in 1998, Saif was charged with poaching two blackbucks during the filming of “Hum Saath Saath Hain” along with co-stars Salman Khan, Tabu, Sonali Bendre and Neelam.
John Abraham (born December 1972) was arrested in 2006 after he had injured two people in a bike accident. In October 2010, a court magistrate had sentenced John Abraham to 15-day simple imprisonment. He was later out on bail. In August 2011, John had filed an application in the sessions court against the conviction.
Chennai-based actress Leena Maria Paul (born 1988) was arrested in May 2013 for a fraud of Indian Rs190 million. A case was registered against Leena and her friends under sections 420 (cheating), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 406 (breach of trust) of the Indian Penal Code. According to NDTV, she had acted in Indian national award winner “Red Chillie,” “Madras Cafe,” “Husbands in Goa” and “Cobra.” Nine expensive cars and 81 expensive wristwatches were recovered from her in Delhi.
Actor Fardeen Khan (born March 1974), son of late Feroze Khan, had got all the media attention in 2001 when police had arrested him with cocaine. He was remanded to Narcotics Control Bureau custody for being accused of carrying illegal amounts of cocaine. In 2011, he had heaved a sigh of relief as the court had decided to try him for only attempting to buy cocaine, dropping the graver charge of possessing over two grams of the drug that carried a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail.
Shiney Ahuja (born May 1975), famous for his roles in films “Gangster” and “Bhool Bhulaian,” had to spend three months in the jail for allegedly raping his house cleaner in 2009. The trial court had sentenced Shiney to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment in 2011, relying on circumstantial evidence, though the complainant had turned hostile and changed her statement during the trial. He was thus bailed out but was ordered not to leave the country without the court’s permission.
Madhur Bhandarkar (born August 1968), the three-time Indian national award-winning director, was arrested in 2006 for allegedly raping a small actress Preethi Jain. He had promised Preeti a film role.
Actress Monica Bedi (born January 1975) had to spend five years in jail in a passport forgery case. In September 2002, she was arrested with a man Abu Salem by the Lisbon police for entering Portugal on forged documents. The two had served jail sentence in Portugal. In September 2006, an Indian Court had convicted Monica Bedi for passport forgery for procuring a passport on a fictitious name. In November 2010, the Supreme Court of India had upheld her conviction but reduced the jail term to the period that she had already served. She has appeared in the famous reality show “Big-Boss.”
In March this year, yet another Bollywood actor Aditya Pancholi (born January 1965) was arrested by the Mumbai Police after he had allegedly assaulted a bouncer at a nightclub of a five-star hotel. Pancholi, who had hit the hotel bouncer on head with his mobile phone, was charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including the ones pertaining to voluntarily causing hurt, breach of peace and criminal intimidation.
He was initially sent to judicial custody till March 20, 2015 by a Mumbai court, but was granted bail soon after.
He had allegedly got into a heated argument with the hotel DJ after his request for playing Hindi songs was turned down.