New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to fast-track hearing of the 2002 hit-and-run case of Bollywood actor Salman Khan killing one person sleeping on Mumbai’s footpath even while admitting the Maharashtra Government’s petition challenging his acquittal by the Bombay High Court on December 10.
A bench of Justices Jagdish Singh Khehar and Arun Mishra admitted the case after senior counsel Kapil Sibal, appearing for the actor, told the court that he would like to hear and decide the matter ‘on merits.’
Realising that the matter may take years before it comes on the board for hearing, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi appearing for the state pleaded for early hearing. “It is a 15 year old case. If the hearing could be expedited and court indicate some date after six months,” he pleaded.
After all it is a case of an accident. There are so many serious matters pending. You can’t ask for the fast tracking of the matter merely because so and so is X (Salman Khan)- Supreme Court
Justice Khehar, however, refused to expedite the hearing. “After all it is a case of an accident. There are so many serious matters pending. You can’t ask for the fast tracking of the matter merely because so and so is X (Salman Khan),” he said.
Salman Khan was found guilty by a sessions court on May 6, 2015 and convicted for culpable homicide not amounting to murder, and sentenced to five years in jail for the accident, killing one person and wounding four others. The Bombay High Court, however, shot down the conviction, holding that ‘prosecution has failed to prove the charges against Khan on all counts.’
In an affidavit filed on March 17 on a notice received from the Supreme Court, Salman Khan had stated that he was not driving his Toyota Land Cruiser at the time of the accident while the police had tried to implicate him in the case. Claiming that his driver Ashok Singh was at the wheels, Salman said the prosecution had failed to produce a single witness or a photograph showing that he was driving the car.
In its petition, the Maharashtra Government had dubbed his acquittal by the High Court on ‘wishy-washy’ ground since there were scores of witnesses at the accident spot who saw Salman Khan in the driver’s seat of his Toyota Land Cruiser that ran over a group of people sleeping on a pavement in Mumbai’s Bandra area, killing one of them.
