A District and Sessions Court today rejected actor Salman Khan's plea to club the cases against him under Arms Act and the Wildlife Act in connection with 1998 incident of poaching of two black bucks in Jodhpur.
Upholding the lower court's January 29 order, Judge Manoj Kumar Vyas gave the go ahead for Salman's trial in the poaching case.
"Let the case under Arms Act take its own pace to reach the stage of trial," the judge said.
Khan had moved an application in the District & Session court pleading that the two cases-- one under Arms Act and another under Wildlife Act for alleged poaching of black bucks in Kankani in Jodhpur on the intervening night of 1-2 October 1998-- be clubbed on the ground that both are linked to each other.
In his application, Khan had noted that while the trial in the Arms Act case had already begun but it was yet to start in the poaching case, in which the arms in question had been allegedly used by Khan.
"Our plea was that to stay the trial of the Arms Act case, which had begun on January 29 in the CJM court until the case under Wildlife Act also reached the stage of trial, so that the trial of both the cases could go simultaneously, thereby doing away with any chance of judgement in the former case affecting the trial in the latter," said his counsel Hasti Mal Saraswat.
But the prosecution counsel Upendra Sharma had objected to the plea, arguing that both of the cases are different in nature and would not have any impact on each other.
He also argued that there was no law providing for clubbing of the two cases thereby holding back the trial in one of them.
