April 10, 2006 11:26 IST
Last Updated: April 10, 2006 14:59 IST
Bollywood actor Salman Khan was on Monday sentenced to five years rigorous imprisonment and sent to the Central Jail in Jodhpur by a local court in connection with the 1998 black buck poaching case.
Earlier in the day, Chief Judicial Magistrate Brijendra Kumar Jain pronounced Salman as guilty along with the watchman of the Ghora farmhouse in Jodhpur where the incident took place.
Four others accused in the case were acquitted.
The CJM, who heard the defence counsel's argument on March 28, had fixed the judgment date for Monday.
Last week on April 7, the CJM rejected Salman's application for summoning a witness Harish Dulani who was missing from the court appearances for many years. Dulani was said to be the main witness in the poaching case, and reportedly retracted his earlier statement that he had seen Salman killing the animal.
Following Dulani's statement to TV news channel, Salman's counsel has moved the application in the CJM court seeking Dulani's fresh statement, which the court rejected.
Salman faces four poaching cases and was earlier sentenced to one-year imprisonment by the same court on February 17 for killing an endangered animal but the sentence was suspended for a month to enable him to appeal.
Seven other accused, including comedian Satish Shah, were acquitted in this case. In other cases, actors Saif Ali Khan, Neelam, Tabbu and Sonali Bendre are co-accused.
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