One of the most well-known faces of Bollywood megastar, Salman Khan, faces jail this week if convicted of drunkenly driving over sleeping homeless men 12 years ago, killing one of them.
Salman has been accused of losing control of his SUV after a night of drinking rum and cocktails at an upmarket bar in Mumbai in 2002 and fleeing the scene.
After years of court hearings and legal hold-ups, the final verdict on Wednesday will decide the 49-year-old actor’s fate regarding charges of culpable homicide.
A household name in India with hundreds of millions of fans worldwide, Salman faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty after a trial spanning 1.2 decades.
Public prosecutor Pradeep Gharat said he had presented the case as best he could to the Bombay Sessions Court judge, adding, “We can only hope but cannot predict” a conviction.
“I am 100 per cent confident that I have done my job and duty to the best of my ability,” Pradeep said earlier yesterday.
The Bollywood star pleaded not guilty at trial, saying his driver was responsible for the late-night crash in which his Toyota Land Cruiser inadvertently climbed the pavement where five men were sleeping outside a bakery in the upmarket suburb of Bandra West.
A constable attached to Salman’s security detail said in his statement to police that the drunk actor lost control of the car while driving at about 90 kilometres (55 miles) an hour.
“The people were sleeping on the footpath. Salman and (his cousin) Kamaal ran away from the spot,” the constable, who died in 2007 of tuberculosis, said.
One of the sleeping labourers injured in the accident said in his statement that “Salman was so drunk he fell. He stood but he fell again and then he… ran away.”
But Salman’s lawyers said the action and romantic comedy star had in fact been drinking water all evening and had climbed out of the driver’s seat after the accident because the passenger side door had been damaged.
They also said the homeless man was killed during an operation to move the car, rather than the crash itself, when the bumper fell off and landed on him.
Finally, last month, his driver took the stand and said he crashed after the front left tyre burst, making steering and braking difficult.
Salman, the son of a respected film writer, has starred in more than 100 films and television shows since his first hit Maine Pyar Kiya ( I have loved) in the 1980s.
But the body-building actor is no stranger to controversy off screen and in 1998 he spent more than a week in prison for killing endangered Indian gazelles.
Observers said given his big fan base, Salman will likely continue on with his career even if he is found guilty, so long as he avoided a lengthy jail term.
“If he gets a brief term, given his fan following it will be easy for him to rebound,” film critic B.B. Nagpal told the international media. “But certainly 10 years will put a full stop on his career.”
