He had been written off on quite a few occasions but is still going strong — at the ripe old age of 47, when heroes usually turn into uncles. But last heard, as his new film, Lage Raho Munnabhai, opened to packed halls on Friday, women (and, no doubt, some men) were still swooning over Sanjay Dutt. Clearly, the original bad boy of the Hindi film industry is rewriting the scripts once again.

The actor — good, bad or ugly — has his legion of friends. Some insist that the lovable goon of Munnabhai MBBS, the blockbuster that spawned Lage Raho Munnabhai, is close to Sanjay Dutt’s real-life character. “He is someone who walks in when everyone walks out,” says close friend and producer-director Sanjay Gupta, who’s made six films with him beginning with Aatish (1994). Today, Gupta is a partner in White Feather Films, Sanjay Dutt’s film production company that’s making a set of 10 films called Dus Kahaniyan.

But Lage Raho... is not the only reason why the Lawrence school, Sanawar, alumnus is in the news. On September 12, a special court is expected to give its verdict on the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case. Dutt — known as Sanju Baba in the industry — was linked with the blasts as underworld don Abu Salem allegedly provided him with an AK-47 during the Mumbai riots that preceded the blasts. The actor spent 18 months in jail.

Some say his time in jail changed him. Till then, he was a regular guy — the son of actor couple Nargis and Sunil Dutt —who’d made his debut as a hero in 1981 with Rocky, a film directed by his father. The child musician in Sunil Dutt’s 1971 film, Reshma Aur Shera, had another nine successful releases including Vidhaata before he took centrestage with Naam.

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Just when he was on the verge of ruling Bollywood (some even hold that he was set to take over from Amitabh Bachchan), drugs overtook his career. Critics thought that was the end of the road for him, but Dutt surprised the world once again. Detoxified, he began to breathe movies — coming up with the hits, Sajan and Khalnayak. And then, before you could say Kalashnikov, he was in trouble again.

So who is the real Sanjay Dutt? A TADA accused or a friend’s friend? “Sanju will do anything for friends,” says actress Raveena Tandon. “If any of his friends is in trouble, Sanju will be there,” she says. “Sanju is a thorough professional,” holds Koena Mitra who worked with him in Musafir. “He encourages you in every scene and his humility can stun anyone,” she says.

Known to be a large-hearted person, Dutt presented a Rolex watch to actor Manoj Bajpai after Bajpai refused to accept remuneration for work in one of the films in the Dus Kahaniyan anthology. “Sanju surprised me by gifting me a Rolex for the role,” says Bajpai. “Very few people in the film industry own a watch like that.”

But, then, that’s Dutt — a man with no hassles and a star with no tantrums. Arshad Warsi, who stars with him in the Munnabhai series, is all praise for him. “Sanju never interferes with your work. He is not insecure. He doesn’t get your punch lines removed or your dialogues reduced. He is very relaxed on the sets,” says Warsi. “I’ve never worked with any one senior who is like him. I have to remind myself again and again that he is a senior.”

That Dutt takes life as it comes is reflected in another of his quaint habits — the fact that he doesn’t read his scripts. Industrywallahs recall how his make-up artiste fired him at the sets of Kaante. Dutt had changed his hairstyle after she had ruffled his hair, for the scene required dishevelled hair. “Don’t you ever read the script?” she thundered.

Scripts don’t come in the way of his relationship with some directors either. Dutt, for instance, signs on a Vidhu Vinod Chopra film blindly. Chopra first offered him a small role in Munnabhai MBBS and later asked him to play the lead. Sanju agreed to both — without reading the script, of course.

Not that his lack of apparent interest in scripts has come in the way of his performances. Dutt even won the Filmfare best actor award for Vaastav, directed by his close friend Mahesh Manjrekar. “He was stunned,” recalls Manjrekar. “But he was happy, too. He had been working hard. When he got the award, he could not control his emotions,” he says.

Even on the personal front, Dutt’s own script has been full of unpredictable twists and turns. He was separated from his first wife, Richa Sharma, who later died of cancer. He fought a losing custody battle for his daughter Trishala, who lived with her grandparents in the US. He later married socialite Rhea Pillai — but that marriage didn’t last either.

Today, however, Trishala is a part of his life. As, apparently, is Pillai, who has since remarried. Dutt even went to see her when she had a baby recently.

Close associates of Sanjay Dutt say that the actor has seen too many upheavals in life to get adversely affected by the judgement. Friends, though, are praying for him fervently, and Dutt himself is keeping his fingers crossed. A thorough professional, the actor has more or less finished all his pending assignments, just in case the court does not pronounce him “not guilty”.

There is, after all, no written script on what the future holds for him.