For the Bishnoi community of Rajasthan the buck doesn’t stop at Rajasthan High Court’s acquittal of Salman Khan on Monday in the two chinkara poaching cases of 1998.
The prosperous and influential group of Vishnu worshippers and environmental custodians are unwilling to forget and forgive Salman his alleged crimes. It’s for the state government now to appeal to the Supreme Court on Monday's verdict. However, given a choice, the apex court is the way the Bishnois would now want the case to go.
“We respect the honourable High Court’s verdict but on behalf of the Bishnois would like the case to be taken to the highest court of appeal,” says Ram Nivas Budhnagar, a working committee member of Akhil Bharatiya Bishnoi Mahasabha and the general secretary of Bishnoi Tiger Force, an environmental protection group that had helped bring Salman’s alleged involvement in poaching to light eighteen years ago.
The trial court had convicted Salman in 2006 sentencing him to one year and 5 year imprisonment for killing three chinkaras in two separate incidents on September 26-27 and 28-29, 1998 — two of them were killed in Bhawad and one in Ghoda Farmhouse in Mathania. This was while he was in Jodhpur for the shoot of "Hum Saath Saath Hain". The cases were registered against Khan under section 51 of Wildlife Protection Act. The High Court on Monday overturned these two trial court verdicts.
“There was direct evidence of his violation of the law, what he did was premeditated and planned and he was a repeat offender,” says an upset Budhnagar. In another one of the pending cases actors Tabu, Saif Ali Khan, Sonali Bendre and Neelam were co-accused with Salman in the shooting of the blackbuck on October 1, 1998, at Kankani village in the Guda Bishnoiya area in Jodhour. Yet another case on Salman is pending under the Arms Act.
Blackbuck and chinkaras are protected animals under the Wildlife Protection Act. Five years awarded to Salman in 2006 was the highest punishment ever awarded for a wildlife offence in the country back then — the only other such case being that of notorious wildlife trader Sansar Chand. The killing of chinkara, a Schedule 1 species like the tiger and the leopard, can get punishment of up to seven years.
The convictions were challenged by Khan in the sessions court, which dismissed appeal in Mathania case and transferred appeal to high court in the Bhawad case.
Budhnagar admits the community’s feelings have been hurt and that they are despondent and dejected. But pessimism hasn’t set in yet. Says he: “We will fight for justice, we will be given justice. We won’t get defeated but will take the fight right till the end.”
