For the first time, as large a number as five Bollywood actors will face a verdict together on April 5, when a trial court in Rajasthan pronounces judgment in the 20-year-old blackbuck poaching case filed in Jodhpur.
Almost two decades after two blackbucks were killed, which is punishable under the Wildlife Protection Act, the chief judicial magistrate (rural), Jodhpur, is all set to pronounce judgment in the case, in which actors Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Sonali Bendre, Tabu and Neelam were arrested in 1998.
All five will visit Jodhpur again, after a visit in January last year for recording their statements in court.
They will once again find themselves in a tiny courtroom, only this time to know if they face conviction or acquittal.
The actors were on trial for charges of poaching under the Wildlife Protection Act and Indian Penal Code during a shoot of Hum Saath Saath Hain. The charge against them is of hunting two blackbucks at Kankani village, Jodhpur.
The incident occurred at 2am on October 2, 1998.
For Salman, who has had acquittals in other cases, the verdict is crucial. Of course, there are three appeals pending before the Supreme Court against his acquittals: two against the Rajasthan high court’s verdict in the chinkara cases, and one against the Bombay HC’s verdict in the 2002 Bandra bakery culpable homicide case, where he was on trial for crashing his four-wheeler and causing the death of one person and injuries to four others.
This is the last of the criminal trials against him.
The charges in the blackbuck case were framed in 2006, but trial began in earnest only in 2013 after being on hold for six years over a partial discharge granted by the trial court, till the high court restored all charges in 2012. In all, 29 witnesses were examined by prosecution, including four doctors of the medical board, a DNA expert and eyewitnesses, before the chief judicial magistrate (rural), Jodhpur, Dalpat Singh Rajpurohit.
Shrikant Shivade, the defence lawyer for four actors except Salman, had argued that in the initial complaint there was no mention of any eyewitness and a false complaint implicated the actors later. He argued that the offence was registered on October 7 but antedated to October 2, by “falsifying records”. He said the actors were shooting for the film on October 4 in the presence of forest officials at a zoo and would have not been permitted to do so had there been an FIR by then.
The trial concluded last February.
Salman said only the first post mortem report of Dr N P Nepalia of one of the animals dying of natural causes-by falling in a deep hole and by dog bite-was true and the second citing gunshot wounds was not. Saif, Tabu, Sonali and Neelam, coaccused as abettors, also said only the first post mortem was right. All accused pleaded innocence and false implication
