The hearing in the high-profile Arms Act case against Bollywood actor Salman Khan was postponed to March 16 as the Chief Judicial Magistrate (Rural) Anupama Bijlani was on leave on Tuesday.
The actor has been charged with killing blackbucks with the illegal weapons as the licenses of both the weapons — a revolver and a license — had expired, and the actor got the licenses renewed after the killing. Salman Khan has already been convicted for killing two blackbucks while shooting for the Hindi film ‘Hum Saath Saath Hain’ in 1998.
The two blackbucks, a protected animal under the Wildlife Protection Act, were killed on the outskirts of Kankani village near Jodhpur.
The actor also has three poaching cases against him. He has twice spent time in the Jodhpur jail — in April 2006 and again in August 2007.
The court was to pronounce the final judgment in the case on March 3 but gave the prosecution a final change to produce four of the 24 witnesses and three forensic reports, the applications for which had been filed in 2006.
Before this, the date for pronouncing the judgment was February 25 but was pushed to March 3 when the issue of these two applications came up and the CJM refused to deliver the judgement without deciding on the applications. In the last hearing, the CJM gave the prosecution a last chance to come up with four witnesses and three documents.
