Blackbuck poaching case: Court rejects govt applications against Salman Khan on fake affidavit charges

A local court in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur on Monday rejected two applications filed against Bollywood actor Salman Khan by the state government for allegedly giving false affidavit about his arm’s licence in the decades-old blackbuck poaching case.

The state government had filed the applications under section 340 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) demanding that a case should be registered under section 193 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against the Bharat actor. It said he mislead and filed a false affidavit in the court of the chief judicial magistrate (Jodhpur district).

A case of possessing arms with an expired license was lodged against Salman Khan in Luni police station of Jodhpur district on October 15, 1998. The CJM had acquitted Salman Khan on January 18, 2017, in this case.

During the trial, the prosecution said in the application filed on June 19, 2006, that the actor had filed an FIR and affidavit for missing revolver’s license in the court and it was not factually correct.

The prosecution said the license of Salman Khan’s revolver was not lost but deposited in the Mumbai Police commissionerate for a renewal. It had demanded to register a case against Salman Khan under Section 193 of the IPC as it said it amounted to submitting false evidence.

Salman Khan submitted a reply with an affidavit, but the prosecution said that this too was false and another application was filed under section 340 of CrPC.

“We told the court that it was neither wrong information nor a false affidavit



filed intentionally in court by Salman. When the court asked to deposit the license during the trial, then there was no license. This was a bonafide mistake, behind which there was no intention to mislead the court,” Salman’s lawyer Hastimal Saraswat said.

“We had requested the court to reject both the applications filed by the prosecution. Agreeing with our pleas, the CJM court rejected both applications,” Saraswat said.

Salman Khan was booked in four cases in 1998 during the shooting of the film Hum Saath Saath Hain. He was booked in two cases for hunting chinkara, one of poaching two blackbucks at Kankani village late on October 2, 1998, in which the trial court sentenced him five years to imprisonment, and the fourth for possessing illegal arms.

Rajasthan High Court had in 2016 acquitted Salman Khan in chinkara hunting case. However, the state government has moved the Supreme Court with an appeal against the acquittal. Salman was also acquitted in arms act case.

Salman was convicted and sentenced to five years imprisonment on April 5, 2018, after he was found guilty of killing the two blackbucks. However, a court later granted bail to the actor after he spent two nights at the Jodhpur Central jail.

Salman’s co-stars Saif Ali Khan, Sonali Bendre, Neelam Kothari and Tabu and Dushyant Singh were acquitted in the case over the lack of evidence.

Rajasthan High Court’s Jodhpur bench had in May this year issued fresh notices to Saif Ali Khan, Sonali Bendre, Neelam Kothari and Tabu in the case.