Hours after Bollywood star Salman Khan was arrested and sent to jail in Jodhpur on Saturday, a revision petition was filed on his behalf in the Rajasthan high court challenging the five-year jail term given to him for poaching an endangered chinkara.
"We filed the revision petition under Sections 397 and 401 of the Criminal Procedure Code in the high court, challenging the judgments of the district judge and the chief judicial magistrate against Salman," Hastimal Saraswat, the actor's counsel, told PTI.
The petition contended that the district court, which on Friday dismissed Salman's appeal against his prison term, had not properly considered the arguments made on his behalf.
The district court also upheld the chief judicial magistrate's judgment of April 2006 sentencing the star to prison in the 1998 poaching case.
The revision petition said samples of blood, evidence gathered from a vehicle used by the star and blood stains were the main grounds for his conviction.
The recovered hair were not specifically identified as that of a chinkara and might even have been from a dog or a cat, it said.
The petition was filed in the registry of the high court's principal bench in Jodhpur and the date for its hearing is yet to be fixed.
Sources said it could be taken up on Monday only in exceptional circumstances or would be listed for Wednesday.
Saraswat said: "The court ignored our defence with regard to prosecution witnesses Harish Dulani and Ashok Patni. When the court itself declared Dulani a hostile witness, how could his evidence be used against Salman?"
The revision petition, however, contended that the decision of the magistrate's court was liable to be quashed as it contained "many errors, contradictions and irregularities."
It also questioned Salman's conviction in a case in which all the other accused were acquitted.
The petition claimed it was "beyond any common sense" that a person from Maharashtra could hunt protected animals in Rajasthan on his own.
