In a crucial piece of evidence that may nail Salman Khan in the much-discussed hit-and-run case, three witnesses on Tuesday identified the accused Bollywood actor and told the trial court that they had seen him getting down from a car, involved in the mishap on the night of September 28, 2002. The three witnesses were among the five people were who were run over by the car allegedly driven by the actor.
The prosecution’s case has been that in the September 28, 2002 hit-and-run incident, Salman, allegedly in a drunken state, drove his land Cruiser recklessly near the American Express Bakery residence at Bandra in north-west Mumbai, killing a pavement dweller and injuring four others, who were asleep on the same pavement.
Appearing before trial judge DW Deshpande, one of the witnesses said that he saw Salman getting down from the front door on the right hand side of the car, while the other said he had seen the act alighting from the driver’s seat. The third witness told the court that while he did see the actor getting off from the car, he did not remember from which side of the car he alighted from.
The witnesses — Manu Khan, Mohammed Kalim Iqbal Pathan and Muslim Shaikh — told the court that the actor was so drunk that he fell down initially, then got up and was held by a group of onlookers that had been shouting “nichey utro” (get down) even before he alighted from the vehicle.
Another person, who also got down from the car along with the actor, told the irate crowd that he was a policeman, an assertion that prompted the crowd to release Salman from their clutches. No sooner did the onlookers release him, the actor fled the scene in panic, the witnesses told the trial court.
Clad in blue jeans and a full sleeved shirt and sporting a French beard, Salman was sitting in the dock when the three witnesses identified him and testified before the trial court. The actor’s two sisters Alvira and Arpita sat on a bench and watched quietly the proceedings in a packed courtroom.
The actor is facing a re-trial for an aggravated charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder invoked against him midway through the earlier trial.
Forty-eight-year-old 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 the 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 the IPC (rash driving) and the relevant provisions of the Motor Vehicles Act and the Bombay Prohibition Act.
The three witnesses, who deposed before the court during the day, were workers of the American Bakery. The actor’s car had rammed into the closed shutters of a bakery located near the actor’s residence at Bandra.
The three witnesses are among the four-witnesses who have so far deposed in the re-trial of Salman in the 2002 hit-and-run case, which began on April 28.Earlier on the first day of the re-trial, Samba Gowda, who had drawn up the panchnama of the articles seized by the police from the scene of accident involving the actor, had deposed.
On December 5 last year, a city sessions court had ordered a re-trial into the 2002 hit-and-run case involving Salman, thus giving an opportunity to the actor to re-examine the witnesses in the context of an aggravated charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder invoked against him midway through the earlier trial.
Accepting the actor’s plea that the evidence adduced earlier before a magistrate be discarded as he was now facing a more serious charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, Judge DW Deshpande ruled that the trial would be held de novo (fresh) and directed the prosecution to produce a list of witnesses and documents to be adduced by it as evidence.
On its part, the Prosecution earlier informed the court that it intended to examine 64 witnesses during the fresh trial.