The appeal by Salman Khan, who has challenged his five year jail term in the 2002 drunken driving case, could not commence on Tuesday as his lawyers claimed that the records of the case before the Bombay high court was incomplete.
Justice A R Joshi directed the court registry to respond to the application and also asked the actor’s lawyers to submit a fresh list of the documents that they feel are missing from the records. The court has scheduled the next hearing of the case on Wednesday.
Salman was convicted earlier this year on the charge of culpable homicide and drunken driving and sentenced to five years in prison. The incident dates back to September 2002, when his car rammed into to pavement dwellers at Bandra, killing one persons and injuring four others.The HC had suspended the sentence and released the actor on bail pending the hearing of his appeal.
In his appeal, Salman has claimed that he did not drink or drive when his car rammed into to pavement dwellers. Senior advocate, Amit Desai, counsel for Salman, had in his opening arguments questioned the prosecution for not calling in singer Kamal Khan, who as per reports was an eyewitness in the case. Alleging deficiencies in the prosecution case, advocate Desai had also said that the trial court erred in disregarding the evidence of defence witness and Salman’s driver Ashok Singh, who had claimed that it was he who had driven the car when it met with an accident.