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Salman Khan, Bollywood Starlet, Gets five Years in Hit-and-Run Killing

The Fresh York Times

May 6, 2015

Fresh DELHI — The Bollywood actor Salman Khan was found guilty on Wednesday in the death of a homeless man in a long-running hit-and-run case and sentenced to five years in prison.

Mr. Khan, 49, one of India’s fattest movie starlets, had been driving buzzed on a September night in two thousand two when he ran over five homeless dudes sleeping on a footpath along a street in Mumbai and then fled, the prosecution said.

One of the victims died, and the others were injured.

The Mumbai court that delivered the judgment on Wednesday convicted Mr. Khan of culpable homicide, as well as various charges under the Motor Vehicles Act, according to a lawyer for the prosecution.

The Indian news media reported on Wednesday that Mr. Khan had been granted bail for two days, and news services said he would seek a longer bail later this week.

Mr. Khan’s case came to symbolize what some here see as a culture of impunity for celebrities and powerful people, and some hailed the decision as a victory of the common man over the wealthy.

“In my opinion, the truth has prevailed,” said Arvind Inamdar, a former senior police official in Maharashtra State, in an interview with the Indian news channel NDTV.

“Celebrities should not have a different status from the common man,” he said.

The case has drawn attention not just for involving one of India’s most famous actors, but for the delays not uncommon in India’s often clogged courts.

The Bollywood actor Salman Khan in 2014.

Agence France-Presse — Getty Photos

In a televised interview on NDTV, Majeed Memon, a member of Parliament and prominent lawyer, questioned why criminal trials were taking so long. “This would demonstrate that justice delayed is justice denied,” he said.

This is not the very first case of a Bollywood actor being convicted of a crime: Sanjay Dutt, of a famous film family, is serving a sentence for possessing arms provided to him by fellows subsequently convicted in the one thousand nine hundred ninety three Mumbai bombings.

Nor is it the very first criminal case for Mr. Khan. He is also facing trial in the shooting of antelopes, known as blackbucks, in one thousand nine hundred ninety eight in the desert state of Rajasthan. That case is continuing, and Mr. Khan has maintained his innocence.

Mr. Khan has also defended himself in the hit-and-run case, telling that he was neither toasted nor driving the car, but that his driver was behind the wheel, according to The Press Trust of India.

Mr. Khan’s friends in Bollywood reacted in solidarity with the actor on Twitter on Wednesday, calling him “the nicest human being in this business,” one of the “finest people” in the industry and “a good man.”

@BeingSalmanKhan is the nicest human being in this business. Wish all our Prayers and love help him in this difficult time. Deeply saddened.

Not commenting on courts verdict- but my heart goes out two @BeingSalmanKhan :large hearted & one of d finest people I hv met in this industry.

Terrible news. Dnt knw wht to say except tht will stand by @BeingSalmanKhan no matter what. Hes a good man and no one can tk tht away frm him.

But some of those reactions also appeared to blame the victims. Abhijeet Bhattacharya, who sings for lip-syncing actors in Bollywood films, defended Mr. Khan and wrote on Twitter that “if a dog sleeps on the road, he will die a dog’s death.”

“Roads are meant for cars and dogs not for people sleeping on them. @BeingSalmanKhan is not at fault at all. ” he wrote.

Roads are meant for cars and dogs not for people sleeping on them.. @BeingSalmanKhan is not at fault at all..@arbaazSkhan @sonakshisinha

After criticism online and in the news media, Mr. Bhattacharya apologized for his remarks on social media, writing, “I am enormously apologetic for the words I used in my tweets.” He added that he was “not at all supportive of drunken driving.”

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