Salman’s lawyer makes application before high court in 2002 hit-and-run case
Bollywood star Salman Khan’s appeal against the trial court order challenging his conviction and five-year imprisonment in the 2002 hit-and-run case witnessed a new twist on Monday when the actor, through his lawyer, made an application before the Bombay high court requesting it to call his friend and singer Kamaal Khan as a witness to verify who was driving the car at the time of incident.
Senior counsel Amit Desai on behalf of Salman filed an application before Justice A. R. Joshi, asking him to call Kamaal as a witness in this matter. Mr Desai contended that complainant Ravindra Patil, who was the police bodyguard of the actor at the time of incident, is no more and he was not available for cross-examination in the court and hence his testimony cannot be accepted as an evidence.
He further argued that it is undisputed fact that Kamaal was present in the car when it met with an accident and he is an eyewitness to the mishap. He pointed out that the prosecution told the trial court that Kamaal was not available for testifying, but it made no efforts to bring the singer to the court, and it should explain this. According to Mr Desai it was duty of the trial court to call the singer as a witness but the court did not do so.
Mr Desai told the court that it is the duty of the high court to call Kamaal as a witness and under Section 391 of Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) the high court has the power to call somebody as a witness if it thinks additional evidence is necessary and either a magistrate of a sessions court could record his testimony.
Justice Joshi than asked the prosecution to file its reply on this application by Tuesday.
Though public prosecutor Poornima Kantharia informed the court that the prosecution does not wish to examine the singer, the judge asked her to file a reply on Tuesday.
The defence has also claimed that it was Salman’s family driver Ashok Singh who was driving the car when it met with an accident in Bandra. Singh was called as defence witness and he had told the court that he was driving the car and had gone to the police station and informed police about the accident but it did not register a complaint and later made Salman an accused in this case.
The trial court had rejected Singh’s statement, observing that the prosecution had proved that Salman was driving the car and caused the accident.
