Salman and I belong to the same privileged economic minority: Khawaja Asif

(Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. Learn to take a joke; you’ll live longer.)

ISLAMABAD – Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif on Thursday slammed the five-year jail term given to Bollywood actor Salman Khan as ‘discriminatory’.

“Salman Khan has been sentenced because he’s a minority,” the foreign minister said while speaking to The Dependent. “Just like me. Salman and I belong to the same economic minority. We are from the same financial demographic that has always been a minority but has continued to reduce in numbers on both sides of the border.”

To sentence him in a case that is twenty years old goes on to show that lives of those who are from this minority are not valued in the Indian subcontinent, he said.

Asif added: “May be if he belonged to the same economic class, if not the same species of the animal he killed, he would not have been given such a harsh sentence and the court might have been lenient with him.”

The Bollywood superstar was sentenced to five years prison by a court in Jodhpur for killing a blackbuck two decades ago.

“Salman Khan is an endangered species and is protected under the Indian Wildlife Act. Khawaja Asif is not, since Pakistan does not have a wildlife act,” said a wildlife activist, film critic and security analyst, wishing anonymity, while talking to The Dependent.