Salman Khan verdict: Kashmiri boy says, I have been orphaned yet again

New Delhi, May 7: With Salman Khan being convicted in the 2002 hit and run case, many are sad and a few are happy. But then there are also those who have been orphaned.

After knowing about the judgement, Gowhar Bhat, a Kashmiri teen who had lost his father when he was just nine said that he had been orphaned 'again' as the man who had promised him and his three kid sisters a good life will now be behind bars for five years.

"I was nine when I lost my father. I was too young to understand that loss but I am grieving more today. We feel as if we are orphaned again," the 18-year-old Pahalgam boy, who had to drop out of school after Class XII, was quoted as saying in a Telegraph India report.

While Salman was in Kashmir, shooting for the Bajrangi Bhaijaan, he met the family of Gowhar, whose grandmother asked Salman for help.

"He promised us all help, education for my sisters and a job for me. He immediately put me on the sets (as a spot boy) and said I would fly to Mumbai to work in his films," Gowhar was quoted as saying.

"We live in a thatched house and he promised to build a good house for us. Within days, four truckloads of bricks, stones and sand were dropped near our home," he further said.

But after the verdict in the 2002 hit and run case, the boy said now all the dreams have crashed and he has been orphaned yet again.

Bollywood superstar Salman Khan was today convicted by a Mumbai sessions court of culpable homicide in the 2002 hit-and-run case, a verdict that could see the actor locked up in jail for upto 10 years.

Delivering the verdict in the case that dragged on for over 12 years, sessions court judge D W Deshpande said "all charges" against the actor have been proved, which included the stringent charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, besides various other offences, including rash and negligent driving and driving under influence of liquor.

The judge held that the actor also did not have a driving licence. The prosecution had alleged that Khan was driving without holding a licence and, to buttress its charge, produced RTO records to show that the actor had procured a licence only in 2004, two years after the tragedy.

The court, while pronouncing the judgement, drew parallels with the Alistair Pereira and Sanjeev Nanda BMW cases.

The Bombay High Court granted him interim bail till May 8 when it will hear his plea against conviction.

The high court granted interim relief to the 49-year-old actor on the ground that he had been handed over only a 2-page operative part of the sessions court verdict and not a detailed order explaining the reasons for his conviction.

OneIndia News

(With inputs from agencies)