Further legal trouble loomed over Bollywood actor Salman Khan on Tuesday, when one of the prosecution witnesses in the 2002 hit and run case, identified him as the person who exited from car in a drunk state and escaped from the mishap site.Salman Khan was in court on Tuesday to depose after his exemption had expired on Monday.
Samba Gowda, who was the first witness to depose in the court earlier last week, had said he had drawn a panchnama of the articles seized by police on the day of the incident on September 28, 2002. The witness had told prosecutor Jagannath Kenjalkar that it was a big car involved in the accident and said police had reached the spot along with him. He had said the car had rammed into a laundry and its bumper had hit the shutter of the shop. The actor is accused of culpabale homicide not amounting to murder after he drove his SUV on to a pavement in Bandra, killing one person and leaving four injured.
On December 5 last year, the court had ordered a fresh trial on the ground that the witnesses had not been examined in the context of aggravated charge of culpable homicide, which was invoked against the actor midway through the case. The charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder attracts a 10-year sentence. The actor had earlier been tried by a magistrate for a lesser offence of causing death by negligence, which entailed an imprisonment of two years. So far, 17 witnesses have been examined in connection with the 12-year-old case.