| Cases against film financier Bharat Shah, actor Hritik Roshan, sportsmen Abhijit Kale, Saurav Ganguly, Zaheer Khan and Sachin Tendulkar, opposition leader Narayan Rane, social activist Anna Hazare, parents of actress Shilpa Shetty and CISF jawan R Namdeo also hogged the limelight. |
| In June, a bunch of PILs in the high court challenged as lop-sided the probe into the fake stamp paper scam and raised questions about allegations and counter allegations levelled by top police officers against each other. |
| They also referred to the Subodh Jaiswal committee report which indicted former Mumbai police commissioner R S Sharma and questioned the stand of DGP Subash Malhotra in giving him a clean chit. |
| The court strengthened special investigating team (SIT) probing the scam and appointed S S Puri as its chief. |
| Armed with the court order, SIT continued with the probe and in November arrested joint commissioner of police Sridhar Vagal, former police commissioner R S Sharma and other cops. |
| In the special court at pune, 64 accused were remanded from time to time. On December 15, the court ordered SIT to conduct scientific tests on nine accused including prime accused Abdul Karim Telgi. One of the accused challenged the order in Mumbai High Court this month end. |
| The HC on December 19 allowed SIT to conduct tests on eight accused including Telgi but restrained it from subjecting Ramachandra Rama Reddy, suspended India security press officer who had filed a petition challenging the tests. |
| On the same day polygraphic test was conducted on Telgi in a forensic lab in Bangalore. |
| Actor Salman Khan got a major reprieve on December 18 when supreme court directed a city magistrate to try him for charges excluding "culpable homicide not amounting to murder" in a hit and run case which attracts ten years in jail. |
| The apex court held that the sessions court order framing this charge and high court order quashing it were not tenable in law as this question could be decided at the stage of the trial and not before. |
| However, in the trial court at Mumbai, the prosecution objected to magistrate conducting the trial and urged for transfer of case to another court. |
| On October six, a magistrate framed 10 charges against Salman. The actor pleaded not guilty to all the charges framed against him under provisions of IPC, Motor Vehicles Act and Bombay Prohibition Act. The maximum punishment prescribed for these charges is two years. |
| Salman was arrested on September 28 last year after he ran over his vehicle on people sleeping outside a bakery in suburban Bandra. |
| On October one, a special court convicted financier Bharat Shah, film producer Nasim Rizvi and his assistant Abdul Rahim Allah Baksh on the charge of forging links with Pakistan-based gangster Chhota Shakeel to target film personalities for financial gains. |
| Shah was sentenced to one year rigorous imprisonment (RI) while the other two got six years' RI and fine of Rs one lakh each. Shah was acquitted under Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) but convicted under IPC. |
| The state government filed an appeal challenging Shah's acquittal under MCOCA. The high court admitted the appeals of the convicts and released Rizvi and Abdul Rahim on bail. The state's appeal has not been heard yet. |
| The city witnessed a series of blasts during the year and police arrested as many as 25 persons for their complicity in the explosions. All of them are in custody. |
| These blasts took place in different parts of the city and its different suburbs""-Ghatkopar, Mulund, Vile Parle, Mumbai Central, Gateway of India and Zhaveri Bazaar. |
| Police busted three modules of terrorists who had planned the blasts. One was led by Dr Mohammed Matin, a former lecturer of forensic science in government-run J J Hospital. |
| Another module was led by Saquib Nachan, a resident of Padgah village in Bhiwandi taluka of nearby Thane district and former secretary of Students Islamic Movement of India. |
| The third module of terrorists busted by police was headed by Sayed Mohammed Hanif, a taxi driver who was brain washed by Pakistani national Nasir in Dubai. |
| In another development, the judgement in the 1993 bomb blast by a Tada court was put off as two absconding accused, Ejaz Pathan and Mustaffa Dossa were deported from Dubai to face the trial. |
| Pathan was deported on February 20 and Dossa on March 3 and CBI filed chargesheets against them in a special court in April and May, respectively. |
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