SALMAN GETS BAIL
District and sessions judge also allowed the application for suspension of sentence for a month against the star’s conviction
Actor Salman Khan walks out of the Jodhpur jail after a court granted him bail in the blackbuck poaching case in which he was given a fiveyear prison sentence, on Saturday.
JODHPUR: Bollywood actor Salman Khan walked out of the Jodhpur prison Saturday on bail two days after he was sentenced to five years in jail for killing blackbucks in 1998.
Immediately after his release, 52-year-old Khan, who spent two nights in the jail, was driven under police escort to the Jodhpur airport from where he was flown to Mumbai in a chartered plane, a police official said.
District and Sessions Judge Ravindra Kumar Joshi, who was in a late night development transferred to Sirohi as part of a reshuffle, also allowed Khan’s application for suspension of sentence for a month against his conviction.
He was granted bail on a bond of ~50,000 and two sureties of ~25,000 each, defence counsel Mahesh Bora said.
The judge asked the actor to appear before the court after a month on May 7 when it will hear his plea for suspension of sentence. In his four-page order, the judge also said that Khan could not leave India without the court’s permission.
Members of the Bishnoi community, who had filed the case against Khan and his co-actors Sonali Bendre, Neelam, Tabu, and Saif Ali Khan were not happy with the bail. Executive member of Akhil Bharatiya Bishnoi Mahasabha Ram Niwas Budhnagar said, “We will challenge the bail in the high court.”
The hearing on sentence suspension application and bail plea began at around 10.30am and the judge pronounced the order at 3.00pm. Khan’s sisters — Alvira and Arpita — were present in the court during the hearing.
Khan was allowed to leave the jail at 5.35pm after the prison authorities received the bail documents. The actor’s longtime bodyguard, Shera, accompanied him to the airport. Salman did not acknowledge hundreds of fans who were waiting outside the court and at the airport.
Khan was lodged in the Jodhpur Central jail on Thursday after the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s court held him guilty of killing two blackbucks at Kankani village in 1998. The CJM court had also fined him ~10,000 while convicting him under the Wildlife Protection Act.
Khan’s counsel Mahesh Bora had moved an application in the district court that included as many as 54 grounds for challenging the lower court’s verdict.
Bora pointed out that Khan had been acquitted in all other cases. Even in the Kankani case, Salman has faced the trial for 20 years, he said. Bora said Khan had fulfilled all orders of the court and so his sentence should be suspended.
Bora contended that the eyewitness in the case was “not reliable” and that “it was never proved that Khan had firearms. “Even the pellets recovered from him did not corroborate the story of the prosecution. Also, the first post-mortem report was completely dumped.”
Opposing the bail and suspension of sentence, public prosecutor Pokarram Bishnoi said this was the only case where an eyewitness was available and he had recorded his statements claiming that he had seen Khan shoot the blackbucks.
He contended that other evidences also proved that Khan was the accused and he should not be granted bail.