Missing driver, chinkara remains helped Salman Khan

In a major relief for actor Salman Khan, the Rajasthan high court on Monday acquitted him in two cases pertaining to poaching of chinkaras in Jodhpur in 1998 in which a trial court had sentenced him to one year and five years in jail.
Salman now has two cases pending against him in the trial court in Jodhpur--one under Arms Act for allegedly using weapons with an expired licence and the second for allegedly poaching two black bucks in Kankani on October 1-2, 1998, during the shoot of `Hum Saath Saath Hain'.

Justice Nirmaljit Kaur did not find any incriminating evidence against Salman that proved his involvement in the poaching of chinkaras. The high court said the cases against Salman Khan were built on the statements of Harish Dulani, the driver of the vehicle allegedly used during the poaching of the chinkaras, an endangered species of gazelle which is Rajasthan's state animal.However, Dulani could not be cross-examined by the prosecution due to his sudden disappearance. 'So the statements of Dulani could not be considered,' the court said.
Moreover, it observed that since the carcasses of the chinkaras were not recovered, it could not be proved which weapons were used in the killing. The investigating officer, then ASP Ashok Patni, could not satisfy the court in this regard. Also, the court concluded that the pellets recovered from the vehicle did not match those recovered from the rooms of Salman and co-actor Saif Ali Khan.
In 2006, the trial court had sentenced Salman to one-year imprisonment for poaching of two chinkaras on September 26-27, 1998, at Bhawad. In another case, it sentenced him to five years in jail for poaching of one chinkara at Ghoda Farm (Mathania) on September 28-29, 1998. Salman had appealed in the sessions court against both sentences.
While the sessions court rejected the appeal in the Ghoda Farm poaching case, it acquitted a co-accused, Goverdhan Singh, in the other case, prompting the actor to file a revision petition in the high court. The Bhawad case was then transferred to the high court. Salman's counsel Mahesh Bora said, 'The high court today allowed both petitions and acquitted him in both cases.' He said it proved that Salman was falsely implicated merely on the basis of Dulani's statements. 'After the disbelief placed by the court in his (Dulani's) statements, the entire case came under circumstantial evidences (cate gory), which could not be proved by the prosecution,' Bora said. The court rejected the prosecution's plea to take on record statements of Dulani and forest officer Lalit Bora, observing that since Dulani's statements were taken while he was in the custody of the forest department, trust could not be placed in his statements.