Bollywood star actor Salman Khan has been acquitted by the
Bombay high court on Thursday in a hit-and-run case in which a man was killed
after his Toyota Land Cruiser ran over five people sleeping on a Bandra
footpath in September 2002.
Justice AR Joshi said the 49-year-old actor cannot be
convicted because the “prosecution has failed to prove the charges on all
counts”.
The judgment quashed a sessions court order in May that held
Salman guilty and sentenced him to five years of rigorous imprisonment. The
actor appealed to the high court to overturn the sessions court verdict.
Acquitting Salman of all charges soon after he reached the
court, Justice Joshi observed he cannot be convicted on the basis of evidence
submitted by the prosecution. He also pointed out “various shortcomings in
investigations and the prosecution’s evidence”.
“Doubt arises over involvement of appellant on charges …
Investigation was conducted in faulty manner with scant regard to procedure,”
he said after seeking Salman’s presence in court at the time of pronouncing the
verdict.
On Wednesday, the high court opened a window of hope for the
popular actor when it had observed that the prosecution had not convincingly
proved he was drunk or at the wheel of his SUV when the vehicle ran over five
people in Bandra West on September 28, 2002.
Justice Joshi said it was difficult to rely on the testimony
of Ravindra Patil, the police guard who was in the vehicle at the time of the
accident.
He observed that Patil, who died of tuberculosis in 2007,
was not a “wholly reliable witness” because of the numerous changes in his
statements during the course of the trial, although he was the lone witness to
testify that Salman was drunk at the wheel.
“Even if Patil’s statement has to be considered as partially
reliable, there has to be corroboration in evidence which does not exist in
this case,” Joshi said.
The drunk-driving charge looked doubtful since Patil didn’t
mention it in the FIR filed hours after the accident but said so a few days
later after Salman’s blood test reports came in. Later, he turned hostile and
retracted his statement.
Justice Joshi also made crucial observations on the defence
witness, Salman’s family driver Ashok Singh, as well as singer-friend Kamaal
Khan, who was with the actor in the car but the prosecution never examined him
in court.
The loyal driver took the blame for the accident after
Salman was held guilty in May, saying he was driving the car on that fateful
night. The prosecution dismissed his confession as 13 years too late.
Justice Joshi didn’t agree with the prosecution’s argument.
He also took a strong stand against the prosecution for its
failure to examine Kamaal Khan, who was in the country till 2007 before he
settled abroad. “The examination of an eyewitness, especially when the case has
very limited number of eyewitnesses, is incremental. But the conduct of the
investigating agencies leads to the conclusion that they were not desirous of
bringing Kamaal Khan before the court. It is thus, necessary to draw an adverse
inference against the prosecution.”
The court said the prosecution had failed to prove that the
left front tyre of Salman’s car burst after the accident that night. The actor
had maintained all along that the car swung out of control and jumped onto the
pavement following a tyre burst on Hill Road in Bandra.
He made these observations while dwelling upon citations of
the Bombay high court and the Supreme Court in a similar case pertaining to
Alistair Pereira and the applicability of Section 304, Part II (culpable
homicide not amounting to murder) under which Salman was convicted.
