The Regional Transport Office (RTO) has the discretion to allot special license plate numbers like 786 and the same process was carried out for Salman Khan, a prosecution witness told the Mumbai Sessions Court where the actor is being tried in a 2002 hit-and-run case.
The witness, an inspector in a Mumbai RTO, said this while being examined by public prosecutor Pradeep Gharat. “The RTO has the discretion to allot special VIP numbers,” he said before Additional Sessions Judge D W Deshpande. The statement of the witness was taken on record.
Evidence submitted to the court revealed that an entire page in the licence register was blank except for a single entry regarding the issuance of a licence to the actor.
The witness told the court that an official of the rank of that Assistant RTO has the power to reserve special numbers that are allotted only after a formal request, which is what Khan for the 786 plate number. “I cannot say under what circumstances the page in the licence register in which Salman Khan’s entry appears was written,” he said.
Replying to the defence lawyer, the witness said he did not know after how many days the entry of Khan’s licence number was written in the register.
Besides, he was unaware as to who had made the entries in the register.
Earlier, the same witness had said that the actor did not possess a licence in 2002 when his car met with an accident and that he had procured a new licence in 2004. He had also told the court that he had joined the RTO in 2007.
A lady police officer, another prosecution witness, told the court that she has received a letter from Bandra police station to serve a summons to a doctor named Sanap.
The doctor had conducted the postmortem of the person who had died after allegedly being run over by Salman’s car. Four others had gotten injured in the incident.
“When I contacted Dr Sanap, he told me over the phone that he was retired and settled down in the US. I then informed my senior accordingly,” she said. Prosecutor Pradeep Gharat said he would soon make an application to reply to the statement of Sanap and Ravindra Patil, the police bodyguard of actor Salman Khan who is now deceased.
