Bollywood superstar Salman Khan has been sentenced to 5 years jail term in the 1998 Blackbuck poaching case by a Jodhpur court while actors like Saif Ali Khan, Tabu, Sonali Bendre and Neelam Kothari have been acquitted due to ‘lack of evidence’
Salman Khan will have to spend a night in the jail as his bail plea hearing will be conducted tomorrow in a Jodhpur sessions court. The judgement read “Seeing the circumstances and rising cases of illegal killing of wild animals, this court deems fit to find Salman Khan guilty in the Blackbuck Poaching Case.”
Salman was accused of shooting a Blackbuck on the intervening night of October 1-2, 1998, while he was shooting for the film Hum Saath Saath Hain. The judgement comes after almost 2 decades of trials and hearings.
The bench in its verdict holding Salman Khan guilty stated, “the accused is a famous actor and common people may try to emulate him, despite this he violated the wildlife act and killed the blackbucks”. The court has sentenced Salman to five years in jail.
In the judgement accessed by an eminent news channel called CNN-News 18, it states that Saif Ali Khan was also present at the time of the crime but he was not involved in the killing.
However, members of the film fraternity including Subhash Ghai and Jaya Bachchan came out to defend Salman Khan and believed that the sentence was little harsh on the actor and he has “already suffered enough.” While others considered to cite his humanitarian work.
