KIRIT P.

MEHTA SCHOOL OF LAW

SALMAN KHAN HIT AND RUN CASE

In compliance to partial fulfilment of the marking scheme,

Criminal Procedure Code

Submitted to faculty

PROFESSOR

MS. SINJINI SEN

CLASS- SY BA.LLB
ROLL NO. - A035
INTRODUCTION
The evening of 28th September 2002, Salman Khan's white Toyota Land Cruiser collided
with the asphalt close to the American Express Bakery at Hill Road in Bandra, Mumbai
slaughtering one individual and harming four others. His blood tests were taken which
indicated he drank more than as far as possible. Therefore, he was arrested, however granted
bail soon after. He was charged with various provisions under IPC, Motor Vehicles Act, 1988
and Bombay Prohibition Act, 1949. Mumbai Police invoke section 302-II of IPC, which is
culpable homicide not amounting to murder which attracts a punishment of jail term of 10
years. Salman Khan surrenders before Bandra police station and Mumbai Police files charge
sheet in Bandra magistrate court after which he was granted bail.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
 To understand what the controversy is about and how the provisions under IPC Motor
Vehicle Act, 1988 and Bombay Prohibition Act 1949 are applicable
 To understand the key points to get a clearer perspective on this case.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
 Was Salman Khan under the influence of alcohol during the time of the accident?
 Was he driving?
 What was Ravindra Patil’s version of the case?
 Was the verdict in his favour?

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The methods used in this research are secondary methods, which include articles, blogs,
books and newspapers. Internet blog posts and articles are an essential part of the research .
The conclusion drawn are carefully interpreted on the basis of collection of data from
different secondary sources . The entire project is roughly based on different articles on the
internet while making the idea clear.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE
 CRPC
 Alister Anthony Pareira Case
 Sanjeev Nanada Case
ANALYSIS

Earlier, the case was filed under Section 304A (rash and negligent driving) which was later in
2003 was converted to Section 304 Part (II) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) on
the charges filed by Bandra Metropolitan Magistrate Court’s rules. The Sessions Court, which
had earlier, rejected the plea asked the Magistrate to frame charges. The SC agreed with the
Magistrate to apply Section 304 Part (II) and rejected the Bombay HC’s view and said it was
“too premature a finding and ought not to have been at this stage.”

During this time, the key witness also the actor’s bodyguard Ravindra Patel, who filed the first
FIR, died of TB. The witnesses claim that the actor was on the driving seat but the actor denied
the claims and said that his left door was jammed, and so he had to get out of the driver’s seat.

When asked whether he was sitting in the driver’s seat, he says he was “briefly” when one
driver got out and the other another, Ashok Singh, took over. Some of the key points are

 Salman Khan denied drinking; however, he didn’t deny going to a bar in Juhu’s JW
Marriott Hotel and another bar called Rain in Bandra. The waiter claims that he
ordered rum while the actor claims it to be water. The bills made out of the drinks
and food was not his. It could not be proved what exactly was it, as it was ‘clear
liquid’. But the chemical analysis report suggests that he was drunk at the time of
the accident.
 The ‘star’ singer Kalaam Khan was missed out. The singer’s lawyers gave the
defence that he was in England. But Advocate Abha Singh appearing for Santosh
Dhandekar, an activist who filed a case for alleged perjury (making false demand)
application against the police, saying that under Section 275 of CrPC a witness can
be asked to depose via audio or video conference. She claimed that he was
deliberately not being called.

“By not examining Kamaal Khan, police tried to cover (hide) an important piece of evidence
which might have thrown light on who was driving the car,” she said. She also claims that the
prosecution also dropped his name from the list without giving any reason.

 Dhandekar’s perjury application also claimed that the wrong set of doctors were also
brought before the court who claimed that they had conducted the post-mortem on
the deceased. This resulted in three years’ delay in the case.
 Also, the Mumbai police claimed that the case diary of this particular case has been
lost along with other 55 of the 63 case related documents which were already
missing.
 Later on in a dramatic twist in the case, Salman Khan claimed that he was not
driving, and it was his driver, Ashok Singh who was driving. The driver on the very
next day came and confessed as a defence witness that it was truly him and not the
actor who was behind the wheel. The defense claimed that the driver took 13 years
to come before the Court.
 The actor claimed that Bala Shankar, the person who took his samples was not an
expert himself. Bala Shankar had claimed that the actor had 62mg of alcohol in his
blood sample which was higher than the permissible limit and that he was drunk.

After the trial was deliberately prolonged for several years, during which Mr. Khan
questioned the applicability of culpable homicide (a stand upheld by the High Court
and rejected later by the Supreme Court), the Sessions Court, to which the file had
been transferred from the Metropolitan Magistrate, went ahead with the
proceedings.

PSO’s testimony

We are not convinced of the correctness of Mr. Khan’s acquittal after a trial court
had squarely found him guilty. To be specific, we are intrigued why the testimony
of the principal witness — PSO Patil — who filed the FIR within hours of the
incident, did not carry enough weight with the High Court.

The FIR is a sacrosanct document, especially when there is no abnormal delay in

Second, the FIR need not necessarily be a comprehensive document explaining all
circumstances relating to the incident, as long as it gives basic facts that make out a
case. PSO Patil had deposed unequivocally before the investigating officer and the
Metropolitan Magistrate who conducted the initial trial, about how Mr. Khan was
guilty of rash and negligent driving. Unfortunately, Patil died before he could be
examined by the Sessions Court.
Considering all these points the Mumbai’s Sessions Court announced five years’ rigorous
imprisonment to the actor against which the actor got an interim bail for two days by the
Bombay High Court.

The actor appealed against the conviction of the Session Court in the Bombay HC.

THE VERDICT
The Bombay HC gave the judgment on 10th December 2015. The Court completely
disregarding the evidence given by the eyewitness Ravindra Patil and came to the conclusion
that the prosecution could not prove the actor’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt. It could not
prove that the actor was under the influence of alcohol or was driving. Justice Joshi further
said, “it is unnatural on the part of the conduct of Patil to say so many things that he has not
said in the FIR, there has been a material improvement on drunkenness and asking Salman to
drive slowly… it is more strange from the witness.”

The judge also said that Ashok Singh was Salim Khan’s driver and not Salman’s who was
interrogated by inspector Kishan Senghal who said that his statement was not recorded.

However, the Court did not accept Singh’s version that was driving and not the actor. The trial
court had noted that Singh had appeared after 13 years of the incident to the court.

The Court also did not accept the fact that the tyre burst and said that the prosecution has not
been able to prove the fact that the tyre burst either before the accident or after the accident.

According to Justice Joshi in the case, “On the basis of the evidence produced by the
prosecution, the appellant cannot be convicted, no matter how differently the common man
thinks.”
QUESTIONS THAT REMAIN UNANSWERED

 Who was driving?

The Defence held that Salman Khan wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t even driving. The Maharashtra
Government chose to take the case to the Supreme Court but as of now the High Court has
rejected the theory that Ashok Singh, who took 13 years to speak that he was behind the wheel.
By acquitting Salman and not accepting that Ashok was behind the wheel, the question remains
unanswered.

 What happened to Ravindra Patil?

Patil was under immense pressure to change his statement in the court, but he didn’t., all bones
and died the same year. He was rejected by his own people. He started disappearing from his
job. He suffered from TB and weighed a shocking 30kg. The court dismissed his statement as
being unreliable.

OTHER SIMILAR CASES

 Alister Anthony Pareira Case where Mr. Pareira was convicted for killing seven
people on Mumbai’s seafront Carter Road in 2006.

A Supreme Court Bench comprising Justices RM Lodha and Jagdish Singh Khehar ruled that
“a person responsible for a reckless or rash or negligent act that causes death which he had
knowledge as a reasonable man that such act was dangerous enough to lead to some untoward
thing and the death was likely to be caused, may be attributed the knowledge of the
consequence and may be fastened with the culpability of homicide not amounting to murder
and punishable under Section 304 Part II IPC.”

 Sanjeev Nanada Case where Mr. Nanda was drinking and driving and had crushed
six people under BMW in Delhi in 1999.

The Court held “Drunken driving has become a menace… Every day (it) results in accidents
and several human lives are lost; pedestrians in many of our cities are not safe. Late night
parties among urban elite have now become a way of life followed by drunken driving…” All
the three cases have one thing in common- all the rich, influential people are drunk at the time
of the incident.
CONCLUSION

Salman khan had challenged the application of section 302 in the Mumbai session court which
had rejected the plea, asking magistrate court to frame charges. The Bombay high court ruled
the judgement in his favour striking down the applicability of section 302. The Maharashtra
government challenged this decision in the supreme court. The Supreme court ruled that the
magistrate court may decide whether the section was applicable. The magistrate court framed
charges against him.

According to medical reports submitted in the case the actor was under the influence of alcohol.
Chemical analysis report filed in 2007 had showed that Salman had 62 mg alcohol in his blood
on the night of accident. The Police bodyguard Ravindra Patil, who filed the first FIR dies of
TB. Prosecution demands Salman Khan must be tried under harsher sections. Additional Chief
Metropolitan Magistrate V S Patil slaps the charge of ‘culpable homicide not amounting to
murder’ on the actor and referred the case to sessions court for trial as Magistrate’s court does
not have powers to try this offence. The sessions court starts retrial of Salman Khan. Salman
Khan’s family driver Ashok Singh owns up responsibility of accident by giving testimony in
trial court.

The Sessions court had ruled that the offense of 'culpable homicide not amounting to murder'
under IPC holds against Salman Khan in a 2002 hit-and-run case and rejected his appeal
challenging a Magistrate's order invoking this charge. Dictating the order in an open court,
Sessions Judge UB Hejib ruled that Salman would face the charge of culpable homicide not
amounting to murder and will face trial for the same. Advancing his argument against invoking
the grave charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder (section 304 part II IPC),
Salman's counsel Ashok Mundargi pleaded that the Magistrate's order was "erroneous, bad in
law and contrary to evidence on record." The counsel had said that the Magistrate 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. Public Prosecutor
Shankar Erande while opposing Salman's appeal said the Magistrate had rightly invoked the
charge of culpable homicide as he had committed a serious offence. If convicted under the
charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder the actor might have to face up to 10
years of imprisonment. The actor was earlier tried by a magistrate under a less serious charge
of causing death by negligence (Section 304 A of IPC). Being convicted under this provision
would have resulted in a maximum two years of imprisonment for the actor. Abha Singh, a
social activist and a lawyer had filed a private complaint before the Bandra Metropolitan court
pointing out loop holes in the police probe and alleged that the police investigators were trying
to shield the actor. Singh alleged that because of police negligence, the hit-and-run case in court
has been dragging on for the last 11 years. A Mumbai daily had pointed out that the cops had
failed to serve summons to the actor in the 2002 hit-and-run case since November 2012,
claiming he was not in town.

The Bombay High Court, while hearing a PIL on October 7, 2002, had directed Salman Khan
to pay Rs 19 lakh as compensation to the victims within two weeks. This included Rs 10 lakh
to the family of the deceased. The Khan family had got the compensation amount deposited
with the court but according to reports they were not able to receive it at the time due to lack
of proper identification.

There is everything to show that Mr. Khan was at the wheels at the instant of the accident.
Since it happened in the early hours, there were no other witnesses except the other two
occupants of the car, Patil and Kamaal Khan, who, incidentally, made himself scarce by fleeing
to the U.K. The High Court rightly came down heavily on the Mumbai Police for not making
serious efforts to get at Kamaal Khan.

The High Court found a number of holes in the prosecution story that the actor was drunk when
the accident took place. The investigator’s lapses in the matter cannot be condoned — including
the delayed production of Mr. Khan at a distant hospital although there was one close to the
Bandra Police Station. We must, however, remember here that Mr. Khan himself disappeared
from the scene for many hours before he was subjected to a blood test. This possibly explained
why it took long for the police to send him for the medical examination. However, in our view,
whether Mr. Khan was drunk or not on that night is not very material, so long as he is proved
to have driven rashly and negligently. Of course, unassailable evidence that he was in fact
driving under the influence of liquor would only have further fortified other evidence.

The defence stand that the accident took place because of a tyre burst was dismissed by the
Trial Court. The Motor Vehicles Inspector who examined the car noticed only a puncture on
one of the left wheels, something which could not have caused an accident. He did not refer to
a tyre burst at all. It is true that the investigating officer committed an error in not sending the
tyre in question for forensic examination to satisfy himself that there was no burst. This again,
in our view, is not very material, because we are here concerned with the reckless driving,
proof of which alone, when accepted, clinches the case against Mr. Khan.

Mr. Khan’s acquittal is untenable. The standard of proof required in such cases is not the same
that we need to sustain a conviction under 302 (homicide) or 304. A conviction at least under
304-A would have been well merited on the available evidence. If the High Court believed that
the police investigation was shoddy, it could have directed a further investigation to remedy
the flaws and fill in the missing details. This was, no doubt, not obligatory. But, in the interests
of the five victims (including the family of one who was killed in the accident), and in the cause
of justice, such an order by the High Court would definitely have enhanced its stature as an
institution that cared for the poor citizen. This is particularly because Mr. Khan has only been
given the benefit of the doubt, and not a clean acquittal.

We all know what happened that night and who was behind the wheel. But as the judgment has
been in favour of the actor, the victims feel helpless. They demand justice and compensation
from the actor. Most of them are permanently injured and cannot work now. They feel that if
the Government is not going to help them, then who will? “If the Government couldn’t do
anything, what will they do?” they say. They have waited long for justice. They say “if the
Court had to acquit him, they could have done it long time back”. It is the duty of the state to
protect its people.

The Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis said on 23rd December that Government will appeal
against the verdict in the SC. The appeal has already been filed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/2002-hit-and-run-case-
chronology/article7970049.ece

https://www.dnaindia.com/entertainment/report-all-you-need-to-know-about-salman-khan-
hit-and-run-case-2154074

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/salman-khan-hit-and-run-case-
chronology-how-it-all-started/