New Delhi: The Supreme Court will hear, after its summer break, the Maharashtra government’s plea challenging the December 2015 Bombay High Court verdict acquitting Bollywood star Salman Khan in a 2002 accident case.
A bench comprising Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar and Justice C. Nagappan on Friday, while recording the statement by Maharashtra government that it was not necessary for it to file any rejoinder to the Bollywood star’s March 17 affidavit, directed the listing of the matter after the summer vacation.
The apex court had on February 19 issued notice to Salman on the state government’s petition, and he, in his affidavit, told the apex court that he was not driving his Toyota Land Cruiser when it killed a man in Mumbai in 2002 but police were trying to implicate him in the case.
Claiming that his driver Ashok Singh was at the wheels, Salman had said that the prosecution had failed to produce a single witness or a photograph showing that he was driving it.
Maharashtra has earlier contended that there were scores of witnesses at the accident spot who saw the actor in the driver’s seat of his SUV that ran over a group of people sleeping on a pavement in Mumbai’s Bandra area, killing one of them.
The high court had on December 10, 2015, acquitted the actor saying that the “prosecution has failed to prove the charges against Salman Khan on all counts”.
–IANS