Court: Can't force Salman to produce driving licence

MUMBAI: A sessions court in the 2002 alleged hit-and-run case involving Salman Khan on Tuesday rejected the prosecution's plea directing the actor to produce his driving licence. Judge D W Deshpande rejected the application, saying it was not tenable at this stage and that the accused cannot be forced to produce the licence.
An RTO officer had earlier told the court that the actor had procured his licence only in 2004, two years after the incident.The witness had deposed in lieu of a charge framed against Khan under the Motor Vehicles Act for not possessing a licence. But responding to a defence query, he denied that he fabricated evidence or had misled the court.
Defence advocate Srikant Shivde had opposed the plea and argued that under no provision of law could the actor be told to produce evidence which could be self-incriminatory.
The matter will now be heard on Saturday, when the defence will argue on the special public prosecutor Pradeep Gharat's application seeking inclusion of evidence from key witness Ravindra Patel, who died in 2007.
Patil, who was Khan's bodyguard, was with him on September 28, 2002, when a person was killed and four were injured. He had given two statements to cops about the incident and stood by his subsequent statement that he had warned the actor, who was allegedly drunk, to go slow but he had not paid heed. Patil had not mentioned that Khan was drunk in his immediate statement to the police after the incident.