A day after the Prosecution opposed Salman Khan’s plea for examination of his singer-friend Kamaal Khan as a witness in the 2002 hit-and-run case, the actor’s senior lawyer Amit Desai charged that the Prosecution was “reluctant” to examine Kamaal on the apprehension that the latter would demolish the evidence adduced by it against Salman in the case.
Contesting the Prosecution’s opposition to examine Kamaal Khan “at this stage”, Desai told Justice AR Joshi of the Bombay High Court: “If Kamaal Khan is put in the box, the Prosecution fears that the entire evidence of witness Ravindra Patil (police bodyguard) would go out of the window. He would demolish the Prosecution’s case”.
Kamaal Khan is a family friend of the Khans. He was with Salman Khan on the intervening night of the hit-and-run incident (September 27-28, 2012). They started from Galaxy Apartments at Bandra. They first went to the Rain Bar & Restaurant at Vile Parle and later to the JW Marriott at Juhu-Tara Road. Kamaal Khan was present in the car, when the mishap took place near the A1 Bakery-American Express laundry at the Hill Road-St Andrews Road junction.
The Prosecution’s case is that an inebriated Salman had on intervening the night of September 27-28, 2002, rammed his Toyota land Cruiser lexus into the American Express Bakery and laundry at Bandra (west) killing one Nurullah Mehboob Sharif and injuring four others.
Desai, who is appearing for the actor in the latter’s appeal against the conviction and a five-year jail term handed to him by the trial court in the hit-and-run case, said that the Prosecution had shied away from examining Kamaal as a witness in the Magistrate Court at Bandra, later the Mumbai Sessions Court and was now opposing the defence plea to examine him as a court witness.
Tearing apart the Prosecution’s argument that it did not examine the UK-based Kamaal Khan as it could not trace him, the actor’s lawyer claimed that Kaamal’s london address had not changed and the police had not made any effort to reach out to the latter personally.