Prosecution to cite Pereira incident in actor's case

In a bid to strengthen its arguments, the prosecution in the Salman Khan case would on Thursday cite the sensational incident of Alistair Pereira hit-and-run case in which seven persons were killed and eight others injured.

“I am going to cite the Alistair Pereira hit-and-run case,” special public prosecutor Pradeep Gharat told judge D W Deshpande of the Mumbai sessions court  as he made final arguments in the September 28, 2002, hit-and-run case involving the Khan, in which one person died and four others injured.

“There are similarities in these two cases….I would be citing this and some other cases,” Gharat said on Wednesday.

The Alistair Pereira case is one of the landmark cases as far as drunken driving and hit-and-run incidents were concerned.

On November 12, 2006, Pereira, then 21, an engineer by qualification and son of a rich Mumbai-based businessman was driving a Toyota Corolla under the influence of alcohol ran over 15 construction workers at the Carter Road at Bandra, of which seven of them died.

The sessions court on April 13, 2007, had awarded him six months imprisonment. However, the Bombay High Court took suo motu cognizance and awarded him three years imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh. Pereira, who was on bail, had challenged the sentence in the Supreme Court, which on January 12, 2012, rejected the plea and asked him to serve the sentence.

He was convicted under Section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and Section 338 (causing grievous hurt by act endangering life or personal safety).