I was hit by a car. Thank god the driver was not Salman Khan

The blinding morning sunshine in the driver's eyes was to blame for a car slamming into me in the United States a few years back. Fortunately for me - very fortunately - the driver was not drunk. He did not flee the scene. He pulled over to help. There was a formal report filed by the police at the scene. I was to be adequately compensated to cover my medical expenses, and with a lot of luck on my side, I made a full recovery after a knee surgery and a couple months of physical therapy.

It wasn't a pleasant experience, but at least I didn't get Salman Khan'd.

For that inauspicious honour, I would have found myself homeless and asleep on a sidewalk in front of a bakery. Then with little or no warning, my precious sleep would have been knocked out of my broken and battered body by a careening SUV that was piloted by a reckless drunk in the wee morning hours. The incident in question resulted in one fatality and four others left with serious injuries. Salman Khan fled the scene and later denied responsibility (he actually blamed his driver). That was in 2002.

For readers in the United States who may not know, Salman Khan is a 49-year-old Bollywood superstar. For the sake of a Hollywood comparison, both Khan and Robert Downey Jr share the same year of birth - 1965. Wealth-wise, Khan was ranked the tenth richest actor in the world in 2014 with a net worth of$200 million, right behind Will Smith at $215 million. Know him or not, there are probably one billion people who do.

Flash forward to May 6, 2015, when Khan was found guilty of all charges against him and sentenced to five years in prison for culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Though I generally have no interest in the personal affairs of celebrities or applaud their tabloid victories and defeats, I couldn't help but feel good in a hurrah-for-humanity moment that someone with an obnoxious bankroll didn't entirely escape the system, despite gaming it for a dozen years. But my moment came and went.

On May 8, Khan's sentence was suspended, pending an appeal to the Supreme Court. Khan was free on bail and was later spotted waiving to his fans from his Bandra residence balcony.

Question. Can any of Salman Khan's die-hard fans (pun intended) name any of the victims that he killed, injured, or maimed?

Speaking of being killed, where I come from, you statistically have a one in 125 million chance of being killed by a vending machine. A very unlucky event, granted. But maybe in some good luck/bad luck, karma-cosmic version of Newton's Third Law, the equal and opposite reaction to being slain by a vending machine might be Salman Khan waltzing through a decade-plus of legal perils like Superman at a red underwear sale. This is the kind of thing I'd have to believe in to dismiss Khan's megastar influence playing some kind of role in his Odyssey-avoiding trial and conviction.

Inevitably, such high-profile cases involving celebrity malfeasance raise questions about an unofficial two-tier justice system that exists like a stubborn ingrown hair on the derriere of a nation's legal system. For one group, justice is blind. The letter of the law is theoretically applied evenly on a good day. For the other group, a much, much smaller sample of the population, justice looks something like a polished toilet bowl in a Taj hotel restroom.

The call for restorative justice, a system that addresses the needs of the victims and offenders alike, have been voiced by observers of the Khan case as well as by the hit-and-run victims themselves. These men have lost their livelihoods due to permanent injuries and haven't been able to adequately provide for themselves or their families for years. "We want compensation, but don't want him (Salman Khan) punished," said Abdullah Shaikh, who lost his leg in the 2002 incident. "Even if he gets some punishment, it won't give back our 13 years."

Additionally, there could be some real backlash effects to consider. Victims and their families could ultimately feel an undeserved sense of guilt at having one of India's most admired actors imprisoned as the result of the court's sentence. They could even be outlandishly blamed by morally-challenged members of the public who place fame and celebrity above the lives of those who must make a less-glamorous living in poverty. There's always the off-chance of some demented fan perpetrating violence against the victims, if Khan does ultimately end up serving his prison sentence later this year. Any of these scenarios would be truly tragic if they ever occurred. What good would a five year sentence serve if the victims are re-victimized in the aftermath?

As much as I'd like to see Khan serve his sentence (in all fairness, anyone of us would have served out our five-year sentence over five years ago!), I'd personally like to see the surviving men, Abdullah Shaikh, Muslim Shaikh, Munnu Khan and Mohammed Kalim, being granted the opportunity to collect more compensation from Khan than the paltry sums they were awarded by the court - much of which was used to pay for medical treatment. I'm conjecturing that the family of the man who died, Nurullah Sharif, may think their award of what amounted to under $16,000, isn't a fair price for a loved one lost to an actor worth $200 million.

Question number two: How much would Salman Khan fans pay collectively in compensation to these families to keep Salman Khan out of Arthur Road prison and making movies?

Maybe there's room for a creative and satisfying resolution in an alternative, restorative justice universe. Maybe there, Khan wouldn't have to serve a single day in prison. Maybe, a couple hundred hours of community service would satisfy the public and grant Khan some genuine perspective on the harm he had caused to his less-fortunate neighbours.

And what compensation for the victims and their families? Maybe they get a small cut of the ticket sales to all future Salman Khan movies to help pay their bills. . . and balcony seats with free popcorn. Everybody wins.