Video Editor: Mohd Irshad Alam
Bollywood’s Bhai, Salman Khan was sentenced to five years of imprisonment in the 1998 blackbuck poaching case by a trial court in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. However, the other accused – Saif Ali Khan, Tabu, Sonali Bendre and Neelam – were acquitted by the court.
Final arguments in the case, which have been going on for the last 19 years in the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Jodhpur Rural, were concluded on 24 March, after which the judge reserved his verdict.
Salman Khan was accused of killing two blackbucks in Bhagoda ki Dhani in Kankani village near Jodhpur on the intervening night of 1-2 October 1998, during the shooting of ‘Hum Saath Saath Hain’.
Khan was facing charges under Section 51 of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 while the other actors were facing charges under Section 51 of the Wildlife (Protection) Act read with Section 149 (unlawful assembly) of the Indian Penal Code.
Khan is no stranger to criminal cases, having already been tried for hunting chinkara deer and for the infamous hit-and-run drunk driving case, but despite convictions in the trial courts in those cases, he has been acquitted by the high courts each time. All these acquittals are being challenged in the Supreme Court.
According to the complaints made to the police and the prosecution, it was Salman who actually shot the blackbucks. The actor found himself the subject of two separate cases based on the incident, one for the actual poaching of the blackbucks, and the other for offences under the Arms Act.
“All of them were in a Gypsy car that night, with Salman Khan in the driving seat. He, on spotting a herd of blackbucks, shot and killed two of them”, Public Prosecutor Bhawani Singh Bhati had said.
“But on being spotted and chased, they fled from the spot, leaving the dead animals there", he said, adding that there was adequate evidence against them.
Refuting these allegations, Salman Khan's counsel HM Saraswat had said there were several loopholes in the prosecution's story.
(With PTI and ANI inputs)
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