Bollywood Macho Icon Salman Khan Found Guilty Of Homicide, Faces 5 Years In Jail.

Thirteen years after a hit and run accident that left a homeless man dead, Bollywood megastar Salman Khan has been found guilty on several accounts including "culpable homicide". The case has been lingering in Indian courts for over a decade and we even reported on the trail beginning in 2013, which has led many pundits to accuse the judicial system of prejudice toward celebrities. However, Indian courts are notoriously inefficient within the country itself, even leading to the critically acclaimed film Court in which a commoner from Maharashtra faces Kafkaesque justice which is now making the festival rounds.

Khan's guilty verdict today was quickly followed with his sentencing. The judge gave him 5 years in prison, a stunning blow for one of Bollywood's biggest draws, and I'm sure this will put a damper on the industry for a little while. Very recently another Bollywood actor, Sanjay Dutt, was found guilty of supplying material support to terrorists and sent to jail, but Salman is a much bigger deal these days. The Muslim holiday of Eid is to Bollywood what Memorial Day is to Hollywood, and for 5 of the last 6 years, that holiday has been anchored by Salman Khan films, each bringing in more money than the last. Surely Bollywood will cope, but it's difficult to imagine a Hollywood equivalent to this event unless we go back to Fatty Arbuckle.

Just in case you don't know who Salman Khan is, let me assure you, he is a very big deal. In terms of a Hollywood counterpart, he's equivalent to '80s Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Bruce Willis, and Sylvester Stallone all rolled into one. He began his career as a romantic lead in the late '80s with films like Maine Pyar Kiya, which led to a successful career as a heartthrob in the '90s. It's really his work over the last decade in which he's starred in a series of massively successful remakes of South Indian films that has made the notoriously buff Khan into an icon of masculinity in India that has led to an entire industry of body worship of the back of his ridiculous physique.

Khan's troubled past is no secret to Bollywood watchers. He has a history of drunken debauchery, most famously an alleged event where he crashed the set of his ex-girlfriend, Aishwariya Rai, and forced her off the film (Chalte Chalte with Shah Rukh Khan was later finished with Rani Mukherjee in Rai's spot). In the case of this homicide, Khan had been attempting to tell the court that his driver was behind the wheel, but the court found that a drunk Khan was behind the wheel and solely responsible for the death of the homeless man and the injuries of four others.

Salman Khan's attorneys have met bail and given the actor 2 days out of jail. He reports to begin his sentence on May 8th.