The Jodhpur court on Thursday has given its verdict on the blackbuck poaching case. While Salman Khan was found guilty by the court and handed a five-year jail term with a fine of Rs 10,000, Saif Ali Khan, Tabu, Neelam and Sonali Bendre were acquitted. Salman was accused of killing two blackbucks on October 2, 1998 in Kankani village in Jodhpur during the shooting of the film Hum Saath Saath Hain.
Bollywood Actor Salman Khan sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment
Salman was earlier acquitted in the case of possession of firearms with expired licenses.
Not only Salman, But Saif Ali Khan’s father and former cricket Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi was also accused of killing blackbuck.
The incident happened eight years after Salman Khan and Saif Ali Khan saw cases being slapped against them for hunting blackbucks. Pataudi had gone on a hunting expedition in the forests of Haryana’s Jhajjar district in 2005.
The endangered animal was killed on June 5 – the World Environment Day.
The matter came to light when Pataudi and six of the hunting party were intercepted by the station house officer of Jhajjar. The police recovered the carcasses of a female blackbuck and rabbits from two of their vehicles.
The police also recovered a 22-bore rifle that was supposedly used for hunting. The rifle was registered in the name of Pataudi’s daughter and Saif Ali Khan’s sister Soha Ali Khan. Later in 2009, Gurgaon’s district magistrate had cancelled Soha Ali Khan’s arms licence for violating the rules.
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A special environment court in Faridabad pronounced its verdict nine years later in January 2015.
Six persons of Pataudi’s hunting party were convicted and sentenced to three years in jail in the poaching case.
During the course of the trial former Indian cricket team captain died in 2011, following which his name was removed from the list of accused.
Those convicted in the 2005 poaching case were Shashi Singh Thakur – a friend of Pataudi’s and CMD of a multinational company, Sayyed Ahmed, Gyasudin, Dayal Singh and Balwan Singh – all members of Pataudi’s personal staff and Madan Singh, a village watchman. The environment court also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 each on the convicts.