The Delhi high court granted Jacqueline Fernandez bail in the Sukesh Chandrasekhar scam case, and it has come as a big relief for the actress.
"All her friends in the industry warned her against this association (with Chandrasekhar)," a film-maker friend of hers, who doesn't want to be named, tells Subhash K Jha, "but she turned a blind eye. Now all her friends have deserted her."
Sources say her friends are "keeping a safe distance". So are the producers.
There will be no queue to sign her just because she has been granted bail.
The two major A-listers, who were inclined to work with her -- Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan -- are not likely to make any announcements of films with Jacqueline as a co-star.
So where does her career go from here?
According to a film-maker who has worked with her: "The one thing she needs to do is be patient, and not sign the wrong films in desperation. She should rely on her buffer funds for now and wait for the industry to forget this episode."
"In the past, Sanjay Dutt, Vinod Khanna and Parveen Babi* have been given a second chance. Why not Jacqueline?"
*Sanjay Dutt after he went to prison for some years; Vinod Khanna when he left the Hindi film industry at the height of his success to become a gardener at his guru Osho Rajneesh's commune in Oregon, USA; Parveen Babi after her reported breakdown.
