Bollywood superstar Salman Khan has filed a defamation suit against a TV news channel in the Bombay high court for damages worth Rs 100 crore.
Salman Khan was accused of poaching a Chinkara at Bhawad near Jodhpur and another at Ghoda farms during the shooting of his film Hum Saath Saath Hain, in September 1998.
According to the reports, the suit had been filed before a division bench of the High Court this year in August where the actor claimed a sting operation was conducted by the channel in 1998 regarding the poaching case which was malicious and defamatory. Salman Khan now wants the news channel to refrain from releasing or making any part of that sting operation public.
The channel that conducted the sting operation alleged that “witnesses claimed they saw Khan shoot the endangered chinkaras in Jodhpur”. However, the witness/es turned hostile later and claimed the video was doctored.
The hearing is scheduled on November 18.Justice SJ Kathawalla will be presiding over the matter.
In a previous hearing this year on August 24, the channel informed a single bench of the HC that they had already removed the video and the script of the entire sting operation and all other related material from its website. In the hearing, both the parties informed that they were working out a settlement and also submitted affidavits.
In July this year, the Rajasthan High Court acquitted him in two cases related to poaching. Earlier in 2006, Khan was convicted by the trial court and sentenced to serve one and five years respectively for allegedly poaching three chinkaras in two separate instances.
Looks like Salman Khan and controversies go hand in hand. Be it the chinkara case or the hit-and-run fiasco, he is always under the harsh lights of media and public opinions. Recently, he created a stir in the media when he backed Pakistani artists and talked about how they are not terrorists as the Indian Government themselves gave the artists their visas.
