Actor Salman Khan was convicted by a court in Mumbai in the 2002 hit-and-run case. (Press Trust of India)
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.
Mr. Khan, one of India's biggest movie stars whose films routinely draw huge crowds, had been driving drunk on a September night in 2002 when he ran over five homeless men sleeping on a street in Mumbai, and then fled, the prosecution said. One of the victims died, and the four others were injured.
A Mumbai court sentenced Mr. Khan, 49, to five years in prison for culpable homicide, and he was also convicted of various other charges under the Motor Vehicles Act, according to a lawyer for the prosecution. Indian news media reported on Wednesday that Mr. Khan was granted bail for two days by the Bombay High Court.
Mr. Khan's case came to signify a perceived culture of celebrity impunity in India, and the decision was hailed by some as a victory of the common man over the wealthy and the powerful.
"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."
The case drew attention not just for involving one of India's most famous actors, but for the delays in the trial, which shuttled between Mumbai courts and the Supreme Court before a lower court eventually pronounced Wednesday's verdict.
"Why criminal trials are taking so long?" said Majeed Memon, a member of Parliament and prominent lawyer, in a televised interview on NDTV. "This would demonstrate that justice delayed is justice denied."
This is not the 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 men subsequently convicted of the 1993 Mumbai bombings.
Nor is it the first criminal case for Mr. Khan. He is also facing trial in the shooting of antelopes, known as black bucks, in 1998 in the desert state of Rajasthan. That case is continuing, and Mr. Khan has maintained his innocence.
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."
© 2015, The New York Times News Service