Hit-and-run case: Verdict on Salman Khan’s appeal today

June 10, 2013

Hit-and-run_case

Mumbai, Jun 10: A Mumbai sessions court will deliver its verdict on Salman Khan`s appeal against a magistrate`s order for his retrial in the 2002 hit-and-run case under stringent charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder today.

Sessions court judge U B Hejib had fixed June 10 for deciding the appeal after arguments concluded a month ago.

Advancing his argument against invoking the grave charge of `culpable homicide not amounting to murder` (section 304 part II IPC), Ashok Mundargi had pleaded that the magistrate`s order was "erroneous, bad in law and contrary to evidence on record."

The magistrate, he contended, had failed to appreciate that the actor had neither the intention (to kill people) nor the knowledge that his rash and negligent driving would kill a person and cause injury to four others.

The offence under this section attracts a ten-year jail term and is triable by a sessions court.

Khan was earlier tried by a magistrate under lesser charge of causing death by negligence (Section 304A of IPC), that provides for a maximum punishment of two years in jail.

However, in a twist to the case, the metropolitan magistrate, after examining 17 witnesses, had brought forth the more serious charge of culpable homicide against the 47-year-old actor and transferred it to a sessions court for re-trial.

Khan`s lawyer also filed written submissions on the appeal and made oral arguments.

Public Prosecutor Shankar Erande while opposing Khan`s appeal said the magistrate had rightly invoked the charge of culpable homicide as he had committed a serious offence.

Erande argued that a prosecution witness Ravindra Patil (now deceased), a police bodyguard deployed for the actor`s security and accompanying him at the time of the accident, had warned him not to drive rashly as it could lead to a mishap.

Yet, Khan did not pay heed and drove at a great speed.

The prosecutor submitted that Khan was drunk and his blood sample revealed 60 mg alcohol which was beyond the permissible limit.

In another development, advocate Abha Singh, appearing for activist Santosh Daundkar, had urged the court to permit her to intervene in the matter, saying section 301 of CrPc allowed her to assist the prosecutor.

Though the actor`s counsel objected to Daundkar`s plea for intervention, saying he had no locus standi in the matter, Public Prosecutor Erande said he had no objection.

Singh alleged that police had favoured Khan by not examining witnesses in the case in the last five years and insisted on the actor`s regular appearance.

The court would also give its ruling on Daundkar`s petition today.

One person was killed and four others were injured when the Land Cruiser allegedly driven by Khan crushed a group of people sleeping on the pavement outside a bakery in suburban Bandra in the wee hours on September 28, 2002.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
July 3,2020

Mumbai, Jun 3: Investigators will subject the cloth allegedly used by actor Sushant Singh Rajput to hang himself to "tensile strength" analysis to determine whether it can bear the weight similar to that of the filmstar, as part of probe into his death, an official said on Friday.

Rajput (34) was found hanging at his suburban Bandra residence on June 14.

According to the investigators, the actor ended his life by hanging himself from the ceiling using a green coloured night gown made of cotton.

No suicide note was found from the spot, the police had said then.

Besides viscera from the actors body, the police also sent the gown for chemical and forensic analysis at the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in suburban Kalina, he said.

It will take at least three more days to get final forensic report, the official said.

To ascertain the exact cause of death, forensic experts will check pattern of ligature marks around the actors neck and also determine the strength of the gown with the help of "tensile strength" analysis, he said.

The tensile strength test will technically establish whether the cloth can bear around 80kg, the weight of the actor, he said.

The test will help determine if there was any foul play, the official said.

Tensile strength is maximum load that a material can support without fracture when being stretched.

Viscera analysis will help in checking whether there were any traces of chemical, poisonous or narcotics substance in his body, the official said.

"Usually, it takes eight to ten working days to get s report from the FSL in regular cases. But since this case is sensitive, experts are taking more precautions to avoid any kind of error in their analysis," the official said.

The forensic report of the actors mobile phone is also awaited, he said.

Recently, the police received the final post-mortem report of the actor from Cooper Hospital, which mentioned the cause of the death as asphyxia due to hanging"

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
June 18,2020

New Delhi, Jun 18: Actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas on Thursday paid tribute to the Indian soldiers who were killed in clashes with Chinese troops in Ladakh's Galwan valley.

The 'Fashion' actor who is currently living in America with her singer husband Nick Jonas took to Twitter to extend support to the families of the fallen soldiers.

"My heart goes out to the soldiers and their families. May God give them the strength to cope with this irreparable loss," she tweeted.

Twenty Indian soldiers were killed in a violent face-off with Chinese troops on Monday at Galwan Valley in Ladakh.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
February 12,2020

London, Feb 12: Oscar-winning British director Steve McQueen is returning to his art roots with a series of short films at London's Tate Modern art gallery, offering a sensory exploration of black identity.

McQueen, who became the first black director to win the best picture Academy Award in 2014 for "12 Years a Slave", is now based between London and Amsterdam and is focused on championing diversity in the film industry.

Visitors to his new exhibition will be greeted by "Static", a film of New York's Statue of Liberty, scrutinising the iconic symbol from every possible angle at very close range against a deafening backdrop of the helicopter from where the footage was filmed.

"What interests Steve is our view of the world, how humans are trying to represent Liberty," said Fiontan Moran, assistant curator of the exhibition.

"7th Nov, 2001" features a still shot of a body while McQueen's cousin Marcus tells of how he accidentally killed his brother, a particularly traumatic experience for the artist.

"Western Deep" is another visceral work, giving a sense through sights and sounds in an interactive installation of the experiences of miners in South Africa, following them to the bottom of the mine.

"Ashes", meanwhile, is a tribute to a young fisherman from Grenada, the island where McQueen's family originated.

The images of beauty and sweetness filmed from his boat are tragically reversed on the other side of the projection screen, which shows a grave commissioned by McQueen for the eponymous young fisherman, who was killed by drug traffickers.

African-American singer, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson (1898-1976) is honoured in "End Credits".

The film shows censored FBI documents detailing the agency's surveillance of Robeson, read by a voice-over artist, for five hours.

"He is... testing the limits of how people can be documented in an era of mass surveillance," said Moran.

In a similarly militant vein, the exhibition features the sculpture "Weight", which was first shown in the prison cell where the writer and playwright Oscar Wilde was imprisoned.

It depicts a golden mosquito net draped over a metal prison bed frame, addressing the theme of confinement and the power of the imagination to break free.

The show runs alongside an exhibition of McQueen's giant portraits of London school classes, many of which appeared on the streets of London last year.

"I remember my first school trip to Tate when I was an impressionable eight-year-old, which was really the moment I gained an understanding that anything is possible," said McQueen, adding it was "where in some ways my journey as an artist first began".

He recently told the Financial Times newspaper the difference between his art films and his feature films was that the former were poetry, the latter like a novel.

"Poetry is condensed, precise, fragmented," he said. "The novel is the yarn".

The exhibition opens on February 13 and runs until May 11.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.