JAIPUR: Hindi film actor Salman Khan has been acquitted by the Rajasthan High Court of killing blackbucks and chinkaras in the state back n 1998.
The court ruled that the pellets recovered from the hunted chinkaras were not fired from Salman Khan's licensed gun.
The prosecution's case against Salman Khan and his co-stars was weakened by the fact that the driver of the jeep he used in the hunt has been missing.
The High Court heard appeals filed by Salman Khan, 50, against sentences handed out to him in two cases relating to poaching of gazelles, an endangered species, in Bhawad and Mathania. Justice Nirmal Jit Kaur allowed both his appeals, acquitting him of charges in both cases.
The two cases had been registered against Salman Khan under Section 51 of the Wildlife Protection Act for poaching of two chinkaras in Bhawad village on 26-27 September, 1998 and one chinkara in Mathania (Ghoda Farm) on 28-29 September, 1998.
A trial court held him guilty in both cases in 2006, sentencing him to one year and five years respectively.
The convictions were challenged in a sessions court, which dismissed the Mathania appeal and transferred the Bhawad case to the High Court.
Salman Khan's counsel Mahesh Bora contended that his client was falsely framed merely on the basis of statements by key witness Harish Dulani, the driver of the vehicle used by the star.
Bora argued that Dulani was never available to the defence for cross examination and hence his statements could not be relied upon as evidence. He argued that both the cases were built on only circumstantial evidence. There was no eye-witness or material evidence for conviction.
Besides this, the major observation by the court was that it did not find a match between the pellets recovered from the vehicle and those in Salman Khan's gun.
Defence argued that these pellets were planted in the vehicle. They were not found in the vehicle during the Forest Department’s inspection. The materialised surprisingly later.
Similarly, defence also argued that Salman Khan was not in possession of the weapons allegedly used in the hunt. They were brought to Jodhpur from Mumbai only on demand of the Forest Department.
Also, it was argued that the pellets furnished to the investigators belonged to an air gun, which has no capacity to kill an animal.
The prosecution counsel K L Thakur argued that driver Dulani was present in court twice but the defence did not bother to examine him.
Thakur, citing the statements of the co-accused, tried to prove the case by corroborating the statements of Dulani, though some of them had turned hostile later.
Citing the Forensic Science Laboratory report on the blood stains taken from Hotel Aashirwad, where the carcass was said to have been taken by Salman Khan in chinkara case and the blood-soaked soil from the spot in the second case, Thakur tried to prove that it was chinkara’s blood.
Prosecution also produced an FSL report of the tyre marks of the vehicle in question in the second case and maintained that out of six samples, four matched, proving that it was the same vehicle that was taken to the hunt.