Actor may be sent to jail, if convicted.
By Akanksha Warrier
MUMBAI: The Supreme Court has denied relief for Salman Khan in the 1998 black buck poaching case, by rejecting an appeal for a stay on his conviction, and has set October 28 as the next date for hearing in the case.
Salman had moved the court for a stay on the conviction as he planned to travel to London, but the British authorities reportedly wanted him to get a clean chit before he entered the country, said reports.
While rejecting Salman’s plea, the bench of Justice Sudhansu Jyoti Mukhopadhaya and Justice Prafulla Chandra Pant, retorted that they “don’t want to know what” Britain wanted and the “parameters of law are same for everybody”. Salman had been convicted by a trial court and sentenced to five years in jail. He has since then been out on bail, while the case procceded in higher courts.
“You get acquitted and then go abroad,” the court told the actor, reported IANS.
The case emanates from a complaint filed by the Rajasthan government in October 1998, against Salman and actors Saif Ali Khan, Neelam, Tabu and Sonali Bendre, during the shooting of the film ‘Hum Saath Saath Hain’, who were accused of hunting black bucks, a protected species in India. They were accused of hunting down two black bucks in Kank village near Jodhpur, Rajasthan. While the other actors got a reprieve, Salman was convicted under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972.
In December 2013, Salman Khan’s counsel had said that there was no direct evidence against the actor that he carried arms with expired license during the alleged Blackbuck poaching at the nearby Kankani village in 1998.
With this order, Salman Khan may now have reached the end of the road for a reprieve in the case, and is looking at jail time now, if he gets convicted by the Supreme Court.