Arms Act case: HC rejects Salman Khan's plea

Jodhpur, Apr 10: The Rajasthan High Court on Friday rejected actor Salman Khan's plea against a trial court order allowing four more witnesses in the Arms Act case in connection with the 1998 blackbuck poaching incident.

The examination of these four new witnesses will now begin in the trial court on Monday.

"Khan had moved an application in the High Court with a plea to quash the order of the lower court, in which the court had partially granted the applications of the prosecution and had allowed to summon four witnesses pertaining to the case," government counsel Vikram Singh Rajpurohit said. [Salman Khan hit-and-run-case: Trouble continues as prosecutor seeks actor's conviction in the case]

Justice Nirmal Jeet Kaur had completed the hearing in the case last week and had reserved the order for today.

"Today, Justice Kaur pronounced the order and rejected the plea of Khan thereby upholding the order of the lower court," he said.

The judgement in the case under Arms Act (possession and use of arms allegedly with expired licence) against Khan was to be delivered by the district and session judge on February 25. [Convict Salman Khan for culpable homicide, demands prosecution]

But just days before the judgement, four applications with a plea to call 24 witnesses and some other facts and documents related to the case-- moved by the then prosecution witness way back in 2006-- had been found to be undecided by the court.

Prosecution counsel (Public Prosecutor) N K Sankhla had termed these nine-year-old applications "important" for the case and had argued in the court on February 25 that these applications needed to be decided first, which was protested by the defence arguing that if permitted it would mean further delay in judgement, which has already taken 16 long years.

But rejecting the arguments of defence, the trial court had allowed these applications partially, and giving the prosecution a last chance had ordered to call four witnesses and three FSL reports along with the relevant material, if required.

PTI