Salman Khan had been acquitted by the Bombay High Court in December last year. (File Photo)
New Delhi:
The Supreme Court today agreed to hear a second petition challenging his acquittal by the Bombay High Court.
In February this year the Maharashtra government had also
challenged Mr Khan's acquittal. The state had argued before the Supreme Court that the decision to let off Mr Khan by the Bombay High Court
was a "travesty of justice".
Today Parmanand Katara, a lawyer who filed the second petition against Mr Khan's acquittal, told the Supreme Court that the High Court could not have acquitted Mr Khan as his appeal should have been heard by a lower court.
Mr Katara elaborated that since Mr Khan had been given a five-year jail term by the trial court in the hit-and-run case, his appeal should have first come up for review by a lower court and not directly in the High Court which could examine cases when punishment was more than seven years.
Salman Khan had been convicted by a trial court last year in May for driving over a man sleeping on a pavement in Mumbai in 2002.
The court had said that Mr Khan was drunk at the time. Mr Khan had subsequently appealed his conviction and jail sentence before the Bombay High Court which acquitted him in December last year.
The Supreme Court will hear Mr Katara's petition next week.