The Bombay High Court on Thursday ordered to quash criminal proceedings against Bollywood actor Salman Khan in a complaint filed by a journalist in 2019 alleging assault and misbehaviour.
A Single-judge bench of Justice Bharati Dangre passed the order on Thursday morning, allowing the plea filed by Khan and his bodyguard Nawaz Shaikh. The court also quashed the summons issued against Khan and Shaikh.
Salman Khan had moved the High Court challenging the summoning order issued by a magistrate court in March 2022. The summon was issued on the complaint of journalist Ashok Pandey who had alleged that Khan and his bodyguard had threatened and assaulted him. According to Pandey, Khan had got into a scuffle with him and snatched his phone in 2019.
According to the complaint, Khan and Shaikh abused and assaulted him in April 2019 because he was filming Salman Khan cycling on the streets of Mumbai. On the other hand, Khan had claimed that there were contradictions and improvisations in Pandey’s complaint and that he had not said anything to Pandey at the time of the alleged incident.
Metropolitan Magistrate R R Khan had sought a report from the DN Nagar police station where the complaint was filed. Based on the “positive police report” under Section 202 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) and other material, the Magistrate found there was sufficient ground to proceed against Khan.
The Magistrate had said that offences under Section 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), 506 (criminal intimidation) of Indian Penal Code had been made out against the accused. Accordingly, the magistrate court had summoned Salman Khan to personally remain present in court.
After the summon was issued, Salman Khan moved the High Court which stayed the order in April 2022. Khan also appealed for quashing the complaint against him. The actor’s lawyer Senior Advocate Aabad Ponda argued that Khan had only asked his bodyguards to stop the journalist from shooting photos/ videos of him, and there was no physical assault.
Advocate Fazil Hussein, appearing for the complainant, agreed that there was contradictions in the complaint as Salman Khan’s name was not mentioned when the complaint was first filed. He claimed that this happened because Pandey was traumatised from the event. In his statement recorded subsequently, he mentioned Khan’s name, the lawyer said.
After going through the arguments, the court accepted Salman Khan’s plea, and quashed the criminal proceedings against him and his bodyguard.
