Mumbai, India ? It’s hard to miss Sanjay Dutt’s famously grizzled face on the Indian landscape.

One of the country’s most popular movie stars, Dutt’s hound-dog looks adorn billboards and the backs of city buses, plugging products from steel beams to underwear. At 48, he has made more than 100 movies, with another on the way next month, and his evolution from Bollywood wayward son to lovable middle-aged rogue has made him a staple of India’s celebrity-obsessed newspapers and TV shows.

There is only one discordant note in this typical symphony of modern media saturation.

Dutt is now in prison.

And not for a transgression of the Paris Hilton, “I forgot my license was suspended” variety, either. The Indian actor was recently sentenced to six years “rigorous imprisonment” for possessing illegal weapons, acquired from Muslim friends in the Mumbai underworld around the time they were plotting a series of coordinated bomb attacks in 1993 that killed 257 people.

The fairness of his fate has since been the main topic of conversation in India.

Far too harsh a sentence, said many of his fans and his pals here in the center of the Hindi film industry. There was talk of petitions, and entertainment figures were reportedly planning pro-Sanjay parties until it appeared that an organized campaign by celebrities might be counterproductive.

Any such effort to win his freedom would “shake the confidence of the common man in the judiciary,” said state prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, accusing Indian television news of “romanticizing” a criminal in its coverage of the case. Nikam had asked the court for a harsher 10-year sentence, though much of India’s legal establishment seemed content to purr that Dutt’s conviction was refreshing proof that justice could resist the seduction of celebrity.

The media showed no such restraint, exploring such crucial details as whether Dutt could handle prison food and what prison job would best suit him.

But many here worry that the media frenzy over Dutt is drowning out a more serious challenge to India’s justice system: the government’s refusal to prosecute all those responsible for the Muslim-Hindu violence that wracked Mumbai (then known as Bombay) in the early 1990s.

The trigger was the destruction of the 16th century Babri Mosque by Hindu nationalists in December 1992, which led to rioting in several parts of India, including Mumbai, where 900 people were killed. The bombings came two months later, apparently as retaliation by the Muslim underworld, leaving sectarian strains lingering over this metropolis of 18 million people.

A subsequent public inquiry blamed a host of leading Hindu politicians and policemen for stoking the violence. But most have never been prosecuted, and many remain in positions of power.

“The Dutt case is just a distraction, a trivialization,” said Bollywood producer Mahesh Bhatt. “The issue is not whether there is such a thing as celebrity justice. The question is what are we going to do about the real injustices that were done here, especially to the Muslim community.”

Dutt’s sentencing has, at least, brought the issue of responsibility for the Mumbai riots back to the surface. His supporters say he was a mere cameo player in much larger drama. The popular consensus seemed to be that although he may have been guilty on the weapons charge, the 14-year lapse between crime and punishment has been ordeal enough.

“All India has accepted him,” said Bipin Kumar Vohra, chairman of the SPS Group that uses Dutt in its national ads to promote its steel construction beams. “We were worried at first. But then we saw the whole nation stand beside him. People were putting garlands (of flowers) around his photo on the bus ads.”