The Sessions court here on Wednesday rejected actor Salman Khan's application seeking three weeks' adjournment of the 2002 hit and run trial. The actor had pleaded for adjournment here on the grounds that his presence has been mandated by the Jodhpur court trying him in the endangered black buck killing case.
Salman Khan's lawyer Shrikant Shivade moved an application seeking adjournment of the proceedings in Mumbai for three weeks. But the prosecution opposed the plea.
Special Public Prosecutor Pradeep Gharat pleaded to the court that priority should be given to the hit and run trial as the programme of the trial was fixed by the sessions court before the Jodhpur court schedule. The prosecution also said that the trial in the hit and run case is going on a day to day basis, and that the proceedings in a sessions court should be given priority over the proceedings in the magisterial court.
Judge D W Deshpande thereafter rejected Salman's application, making it mandatory on him to present himself before the court on March 27, when his statement will be recorded under section 313 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
Another application of the actor seeking recall of the first investigating officer was also rejected by the court. The actor had said he wanted to cross-examine the police officer regarding the omissions and contradictions of deceased police constable Ravindra Patil who is the complainant in the case. But the court observed that since the lower court had not posed the questions of omissions and contradictions to the witness himself, who is no more now, the investigating officer cannot be questioned anymore about it.
Meanwhile, the prosecution declared on Wednesday that it had closed the evidence in the case.
In another development, the court also took on record three photographs of Salman's vehicle involved in the accident. The prosecution produced three photos of the car ┬ two from the front and one from behind. When the prosecution submitted the photographs to the court and pleaded that they be taken on record, the defence opposed it. The defence said that the photographs were produced for the first time in the entire trial, and that it did not have any opportunity to question the photographer, or to seek details about them.
But the prosecution said that the photographs were not originally mentioned by it in its list of evidence, and they had come up only during the cross-examination of the witnesses by the defence. The court thereafter took all the three photographs on record.
