New Delhi/Nagpur: The Maharashtra government has challenged the verdict in Salman Khan 2002 hit-and-run case in the Supreme Court, calling the decision taken by the Bombay High Court as travesty of justice.
The government has also dismissed the driver theory, calling it suspicious. It pointed that for 13 years, his family had maintained that the driver was at home when the incident occurred.
According to the Maharashtra government, the statement of the injured was also discarded by the High Court.
The next date of hearing in the case is February 12.
Notably, the actor has already moved the Supreme Court, filing a caveat stating that no orders be passed in the case without hearing him.
A caveat is a legal notice to a court or public officer made by a party to suspend a certain proceeding until the notifier is given a hearing.
The Maharashtra government had moved the Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court’s verdict acquitting the Bollywood actor in the case in which one person was killed and four others were injured.
The petition was filed in the apex court against the high court’s judgement acquitting Salman of “all charges”, overturning trial court’s order sentencing him for five years.
The high court, in its verdict passed on December 10, 2015, had held that prosecution had failed to prove “beyond reasonable doubt” that the actor was driving the vehicle at the time of the accident and was drunk.
The high court had rejected as “wholly unreliable” the statement of eyewitness Ravindra Patil, former police bodyguard of Salman, recorded by a magistrate in which he had accused the actor of driving under the influence of liquor.
The judge had said that Patil was a “wholly unreliable” witness because he had subsequently made “improvements” in his statement to the magistrate.
On May 6, 2015 a sessions court had convicted Salman in the case in which one person was killed and four others were injured when his vehicle had crushed them when they were asleep on a pavement outside a laundry.
