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Valentine wedding

Sharmila Taliculam and Suparn Verma

Rhea Pillai. Click for bigger pic!

It was a marriage worthy of a film actor -- sudden, dramatic, and yet totally predictable. For the question was only when, not if.

It was 0330 hours on Valentine's night. Actually it was early next morning, when Sanjay Dutt decided he just had to marry girlfriend Rhea Pillai. There and then.

There was no muhurat, no band, no flashing lights, no film folk, not even the parents of the bride and groom. It was, as we mentioned, sudden.

Sanjay Dutt. Click for bigger pic!

Lawyer Kajal Anand, Rhea's closest friend, told us what happened that night.

"It was very impromptu. We were partying on Saturday and Sanjay decides that he wanted to get married right then. He went up to Rhea and asked her to marry him. We (eight friends, along with Kajal and her mother) all went to the Mahalakshmi Temple and they (Sanjay and Rhea) got married there."

"Yes I'm married" confirmed Rhea as she prepared for the mehendi ceremony on Monday evening. Rhea refused to speak further, promising us more later. Sanjay was unavailable for comment as he was attending a hearing on the 1993 bomb blasts case.

The couple together. Click for bigger pic!

Says Sanjay's articulate secretary Pankaj, "It was a completely sudden decision; it wasn't planned. We are very happy for him. It was a nice culmination of their relationship." He too refused to divulge details of the event, "They are very happy together, let them share some time alone," he said.

Pandits at the Mahalakshmi temple expressed surprise at how a wedding could be done so late in the night since the gates are shut at 10 in the night.

Says Kajal Anand, "There was nothing Indian because we were all in our dinner outfits. Sanjay tried to call his sister, but it was three in the morning and he couldn't get through. But they are all happy."

Rhea campaigning for Sanjay's release when he was in jail. Click for bigger pic!

Asked if Sanjay's daughter Trishala would be brought over to India from New York by Sanjay, family sources said the couple would decide on it. Trishala is Sanjay's daughter by his first wife actress Richa Sharma who died last year of a brain tumour after a protracted illness.

Rhea had stood by Sanjay throughout his term in jail as one of the accused in the 1993 bomb blasts case. Sanjay had always admitted his indebtedness to her loyalty in his time of need.

Rhea, a former air hostess who switched to modelling, now works with Piaget, the international watch company.

Tomorrow, the newly-weds will fly off to Mauritius where Sanjay will also be shooting.