After a judge sentenced the actor Salman Khan to five years, people have come out saying that the law is unduly harsh on celebs. In an editorial homily, the Times of India claims that the law should be “technical”; cites “equality before the law” and says that the punishment is unduly harsh. The unstated assumption underlying this argument is, clearly, that the offence is trivial. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

In his decision, Judge BK Jain, the Chief Judicial Magistrate in Jodhpur who handed down the sentence, does say that Salman Khan is under a duty to lead by example. This is what the Times editorial attacks. Is the Times right?

Let’s look at something that seems to have slipped the Times: the law. The Wildlife Protection Act prescribes a jail sentence of upto six years for illegal hunting (read poaching). Salman was given five. The issue, therefore, is not whether the Judge enlarged the sentence beyond the limits permissible in law but one of proportionality. The Times’s argument is that the sentence is disproportionate. Therefore, it follows that, according to the Times, this is a venial offence.

And that is something it most certainly is not. At the time it happened, as I recollect, Salman Khan and bunch of other stars sped off into a restricted area late one night. He shot a cinkara, an endangered species of deer, one listed as protected under the Wildlife Protection Act. With him at the time was the actress Tabu, and I remember her saying in a later interview that she and her friends were unaware that hunting was illegal. “There was no sign there,” she said, or words to that effect. Well, well. And I thought Tabu was one of our more sensitive and intelligent actors. There’s also no sign anywhere in the city saying hunting of film stars is illegal: does that make it open season on the film industry?

Killing any animal is a crime. Killing a protected animal is a statutory crime. There is just no excuse for it. And there can be no mitigation. In fact, what the Times (and others of the film industry who have spoken up for Salman) seem to be saying is that because he is a celeb and, therefore, an Important Man, he should be let off lightly. The Times’s argument defeats itself and the editor is, as they say, hoist by his own petard.

This case is also about people like Valmik Thapar, and the cause for which they have fought for over 20 years. The country’s forests and wildlife aren’t just a mess: they are in imminent danger of vanishing. We cannot forget the tragic findings of last year, about the horrific decline in the country’s tiger population, including in some of the major reserves and National Parks. What to do about this is a decision each of us has to make at every minute of our lives. Do we shoot wildlife? If yes, then with guns or only with cameras?

That was a decision Salman Khan made, and he made the wrong decision. He had every reason to know that it was wrong. He has the privileges of knowledge, education, wealth and information — privileges that are not commonly available to India’s Everyman. Yet, perhaps insulated from reality by over-immersion in a make believe world, he chose to break the law. Let’s not get into whether he hunts because it’s his way of compensating, or why he has such a wild need to assert his alpha male status in the public eye. That only trivializes the debate. What is relevant here is that he knew, or should have known, that his decision was wrong; and yet he took that decision. There is no mitigation.

In fact, Salman Khan had another choice. He had the power to say no, and the right to publicize that choice and its wisdom. It would have gone far, not just for him, but for the thousands or hundreds of thousands who (inexplicably) adore him. He could have set an example, a right, wise and mature one. Instead, he chose to set quite the opposite: his actions say, “I am Salman Khan. I can break the law. I follow no law but my own, and if it gives me pleasure to shoot a defenseless animal from a distance, then so be it, and nothing can be done to me. And look, you there, you, too, can be me. You, too, can do as I do.”

No, he can’t. And, no, they can’t either. And yes, he did have a duty to tell his followers that. And here is where the Times goes hopelessly wrong: he is not being punished, or being punished more severely, for failing to set an example; he is being punished for a crime he committed, deliberately, wantonly and knowingly, confident and secure in his infallibility. All that the Judge has said, and rightly, is that he need not have done this. He had the choice. He is not someone forced to poaching to feed a starving family. He did this for pleasure. He knowingly broke the law for fun. He knew better than that, and he ought to have demonstrated his respect for his fellow creatures, and for the law. His crime is not trivial, it is serious, and the law sets a price on it: the law wants five years of his life. This is about the rule of law being applied, firmly, to those whose very actions expose their innate belief that they are above the law.

So when the filmwallahs claim that Salman is a “soft target”, they are utterly and totally wrong. There was only one soft target here. It had four legs, not two.