The Prosecution on Tuesday asked the trial court to declare a witness — a security guard of a restaurant — as “hostile”, after he backtracked from his statement made earlier to the police in the 2002 hit-and-run case that he had seen Salman Khan alight from his car and run away from the spot soon after the accident.
In his deposition made before Sessions Judge DW Deshpande who is holding a re-trial into the September 28, 2002 hit-and-run incident, Sachin Kadam, a security guard of Neel Sagar Hotel said that he had not seen Salman alight from the driver’s seat of the car, and run away from the scene.
“My statement — as recorded by police — that I saw Salman alight from the driver’s seat of the car and run away from the scene is incorrect,” Kadam told the court.Kadam’s retraction came when the Prosecution confronted him with his earlier statement.“I had not told the police that I had seen the actor get from the driver’s seat of the car and run away from the spot. All I had said that a big car came and rammed into the shop. I did not also tell the police that the people were saying that Salman had caused the accident,” Kadam clarified.
Kadam said he was not in a position to say as to why the police had recorded the “incorrect’ version of his statement.Seeing Kadam renege from his earlier statement to the police, Public Prosecutor Jagannath Kenjralkar asked the court to declare Kadam as a “hostile” witness as he had not supported the Prosecution. However, the court has yet to pass its order on the Prosecution’s plea.
Responding queries by Salman’s lawyer Shrikant Shivade, Kadam said that he had not seen the accident — in real time — as he was on duty at the gate of the restaurant on the night of the incident. “It was only after I heard noise that I went to the accident site where a car rammed into a shop,” Kadam said.
Neel Sagar Hotel is located in front of the American Express bakery at Bandra in north-west Mumbai, where Salman — allegedly in a drunken state — had driven his land Cruiser recklessly on September 28, 2002, killing a pavement dweller and injuring four others, who were asleep on the same pavement.
However, in what came as a relief to the Prosecution, another witness Mohammed Abdullah Rauf Shaikh, who sustained injuries on his right leg in the accident, identified Salman and said that he saw the actor after he was rescued from beneath the wheels of the car.Shaikh said he saw Salman standing at the accident site after he and another victim Narullah were rescued from under the car. The second victim, who was rescued along with him, succumbed to his injuries later.
“I saw Salman after I was rescued. I don’t know if Salman was also trying to rescue the victims. Some taxi drivers and bakery workers were saying that Salman was involved in the accident,” Sheikh said.
“I was sleeping with Narullah and others outside the American Bakery when the car ran over us and hit the shutter. I was underneath the car for 10 to 15 minutes and could not see who was around us. When I was rescued, Salman and there were two more persons whom I did not recognise. I was admitted to Bhabha Hospital for a leg fracture. At the hospital,. I learnt that Narullah had been killed in the mishap,” Shaikh said.
Forty-eight-year-old Salman was present in the court when two more witnesses deposed. With the two fresh deposition, the total number of witnesses who have testified in the case has gone up to eleven.Salman is facing a re-trial in the hit-and-run case before the city sessions court for an aggravated charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder invoked against him midway through the earlier trial on December 5 last year.
Salman, against whom fresh charges were framed in the court of Judge UB Hejib on July 24 last year, is being tried under section 304 (II) of Indian Penal code — a more severe charge than the one of causing death by negligence (section 304-A of IPC) that he was tried for earlier — and other charges, including the ones framed against him under section 279 of IPC (rash driving) and the relevant provisions of Motor Vehicles Act and Bombay Prohibition Act.