Salman Khan’s attempt to subvert justice by claiming he was not behind the wheel on September 28, 2002, when his Toyota Land Cruiser killed a man and injured four others, did not save him from five years in jail.
But his money did enable him to ferry Harish Salve from Delhi to procure a two-day reprieve. The actor drove from the Sessions Court at 7.30 p.m., after his papers were processed by the court staff after normal working hours. The court staff was possibly star-struck.
Justice Abhay Thipsay of the Bombay high court granted the two-day reprieve to the actor three hours after he was sentenced to five years in prison by Judge D.W. Deshpande of the Sessions Court. The actor has now been out on bail for 13 long years.
But this conviction will not bring back to life a young police constable, Ravindra Patil, whose testimony played a vital role in this conviction and has been ignored by the media. A mere bodyguard, Patil was sitting next to Salman Khan on the fateful night and lodged the First Information Report which saved the prosecution case. Patil swore on affidavit that the actor was driving recklessly while drunk and Patil had cautioned him to slow down. This evidence, coupled with other facts, helped the prosecution clinch the case.
Senior police officers allegedly pressurized Patil to renege on what he had said. After he refused, he was arrested in 2006 because he did not appear in court as a witness and was later sacked from the police force; he later succumbed to tuberculosis in 2007 and died a destitute. Patil was disowned by his own family and maintained until his last breath that the actor was behind the wheel.
Ironically, the prosecutor never sought an inquiry into Patil’s death, which needs to be probed further, because in death, he has emerged a hero. Although his testimony was not tested by cross-examination, the court has undoubtedly chosen to believe this witness and disbelieve the false evidence of Salman Khan’s driver, Ashok Singh, who drove the actor to the court in the morning and later back home in the evening.
A sum of Rs 600 crore, which is riding on the actor by way of partially-made films and endorsements, did not deter the judge from sentencing the actor to five years in jail, although the section does not stipulate a minimum sentence. If the judge had imposed three years, the actor could have procured bail from the same court.
The prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt the actor’s guilt despite his attempt to mislead the court through his driver, Ashok Singh, who proclaimed in Bollywood style — 10 years after the incident took place — that he was behind the wheel of the ill-fated vehicle. This statement contradicted what Ravindra Patil had testified to earlier. Singh was cross examined while Patil was not. But hyper-technicality should not override common sense and the court rightly chose to believe the evidence of Patil.
The court also refused to hear an application for perjury against Ashok Singh, who was taken into custody with his boss, after the verdict. Needless to say, he will be well looked after by the actor for showing his loyalty because he faces charges of contempt of court and fabricating evidence to mislead the court. The latter charge carries a maximum of seven years in jail.
The actor’s fate was sealed when the judge looked at Salman Khan in the witness box and told him softly: “You were driving the car. You were under the influence of alcohol.” It made his mother sick and his sisters sob in the court room. But all to no avail.
Both the police and the prosecutors are poorly paid or suffer from degree of incompetence, which makes it impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt bona fide charges against the accused. In this case too, the case diary was lost with other crucial papers and the false evidence of Ashok Singh, coupled with the self-contradictory statements of a constable and the chemical analyst, Bal Shankar, who fumbled during cross-examination by the defence, could have created a doubt in the mind of the court whether the actor was really behind the wheel.
Nevertheless, all these points will be argued again before the Bombay high court on the ground that the evidence of the defence was not properly evaluated by the trial court. Although in appeal, no evidence can be recorded afresh, arguments as to whether the evidence was properly appreciated by the trial court can be put forward.
While the exact reasoning of the judge was not available at the time of going to press, it is apparent the prosecution evidence was accepted despite the police blunders and the fumbling Bal Shankar; also, the witnesses produced by the defence lawyers did not succeed in breaking the chain of circumstances pointing to Salman Khan’s guilt.
The entire case against the celebrity took a different turn when a city magistrate examined 17 witnesses and held that the case against the actor was not merely one of causing death due to negligence, which carried a maximum sentence of 2 years but was the more serious one of culpable homicide (manslaughter) not amounting to murder which carried a sentence of 10 years in jail. This proved to be the undoing of the actor.
When a person voluntarily gets himself drunk with the knowledge that it is likely to cause death, but without any intention to cause death, it would constitute culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Murder involves planning to kill a specific person while culpable homicide does not. The judicial trend is to award five years in jail for culpable homicide and, going by that, the judge has awarded the minimum sentence to Salman Khan.
As Salman Khan returned home in Galaxy Apartment, Bandra on Wednesday evening, after his conviction in the 2002 hit and run case, the situation outside his house turned ugly. A big crowd of his fans was already waiting for his return and climbed onto various cars in his convoy to get a glimpse of the actor. Following this the Bandra police deployed 50 policemen outside his home and even had to resort to measures like a mild lathi charge to disperse the crowd from the area.
As sessions Judge DW Deshpande pronounced Salman Khan guilty and was about to announce the quantum of punishment, the team of defence lawyers appealed to the Judge to consider that Khan is a prominent philanthropist personality in society, who has been donating almost 50% of his salary for the upliftment of the under-privileged. If he is sentenced to a longer term of imprisonment, the society will lose out on the money he donates, which is a great loss for its development.
Salman Khan stopped his team of lawyers in the court on Wednesday from talking further about his disease. His lawyer mentioned the disease ‘Trigeminal neuralgia’ that the actor was suffering from, and that Khan “had a weak heart”, and asked the court to mitigate his sentence as his health condition was not good. ‘Trigeminal neuralgia’ is a facial nerve disorder commonly known as the “suicide disease”. Hearing this, the actor, looking disgusted, stopped his defence lawyer and asked him not to use this as a reason to mitigate his punishment as it is personal.
Superstar Salman Khan’s younger sister Arpita Khan Sharma has extended thanks to her brother’s die-hard fans for their relentless support, ahead of the verdict today in the 2002 hit-and-run case involving him. “Today is a big day for us & we know we are not alone. Thank you for your Duas, love & support always. God bless!” tweeted Arpita, who recently got married to Aayush Sharma in a lavish ceremony hosted by Salman.
