The Bombay High Court on Monday rejected an intervention application filed by the wife of a convict, seeking a stay on an appeal filed by Bollywood actor Salman Khan against the five-year sentence awarded to him in the 2002 hit-and-run case.
Hearing an intervention application filed by the wife of Bhagwan Gangurde, a convict whose appeal has not been heard since 2009, Justice AR Joshi refused to stay the proceedings on Salman’s appeal against his conviction in the 2002 hit-and-run case on the ground that both the sides in the case had consented for expeditious hearing of the matter.
Aprana Vatkar, the intervening applicant’s counsel, had sought a stay on the actor’s appeal, saying it should not be heard until the petition filed by her client separately before another bench was decided by the Bombay High Court.
Vatkar’s contention was that the matters of celebrities were heard out-of-turn whereas those of other convicts like her client Shashikala Gangurde’s husband Bhagwan were kept pending endlessly as a result of which he continued to languish in jails. While declining to entertain the convict Gangurde’s intervention application seeking a stay on the hearing of the actor’s appeal, Judge Joshi said that both the sides had consented for expeditious hearing of the matter.
The Judge noted that in the appeal against his conviction filed by Gangurde, whose wife had sought to intervene in the actor’s case, the high court had not passed any judicial order.
After Salman’s lawyer Amit Desai requested the court that he made available a CD of the proceedings recorded in the trial court so that so that he could argue to appeal effectively in the High Court, Prosecutors Sandeep Shinde and Pradeep Gharat told the Judge that no such CD of the court proceedings was available and the question of making such a CD available to the defence team did not arise.