JOIN USThe Mumbai sessions court on Monday deferred the hearing on actor Salman Khan’s appeal in the 2002 hit-and-run case till June 24.
Khan had challenged a magistrate’s order directing a retrial in the case under charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Sessions judge U B Hejib was due to deliver his verdict in the matter on Monday.
Khan’s advocate Ashok Mundargi had argued that the lower court’s order was “erroneous, bad in law and contrary to the evidence on record.”
The magistrate had ordered fresh trial under Section 304 (III) of the IPC, which entails a maximum of 10 years imprisonment. Earlier, Khan was being tried under Section 304A of the IPC, i.e, causing death by negligence which stipulates a maximum of two years in jail.
The metropolitan magistrate, after examining 17 witnesses and public prosecutor S Erande’s contention that the prime witness, police bodyguard Ravindra Patil, now dead, had repeatedly warned Khan not to drive rashly and invoked Section 304 (III) of the IPC.
Erande further submitted that Khan was drunk at the time of the incident in which one person was killed and four others injured when his SUV ran over some pavement-dwellers in the suburban Bandra in the early hours of September 28, 2002.