'Evidence of Salman's guard admissible'

The evidence of police constable Ravindra Patil, the bodyguard of Salman Khan who died a few years ago, is admissible under the Indian Evidence Act, the prosecution on Friday told the Bombay High Court.

“According to us, the evidence of Ravindra Patil is admissible under Section 33 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872....it is an evidence before a judicial proceeding,” Public Prosecutor and Government Pleader Sandeep Shinde told Justice A R Joshi, who is presiding over the appeal of the actor against his conviction and five-year jail term in a 13-year-old drunken-driving and hit-and-run case.

The police bodyguard in his statement had said that Khan was under the influence of alcohol and was driving the SUV rashly—resulting in the accident, in which one person died and four others were injured.

Patil, who was attached to the Protection Branch of Mumbai Police, was accompanying Khan in the Toyota Land Cruiser Lexus in the early hours of September 28, 2002, during the sequence of events that followed the accident.