An Indian court freed Bollywood star Salman Khan on bail on Friday almost a week after he was arrested and jailed for shooting an endangered gazelle during hunting trips nearly a decade ago. He walked free on Friday evening, wearing a blue-grey baseball cap, a white shirt and jeans.
A crowd of policemen escorted him to a black sports utility vehicle waiting outside the jail. Further away, hundreds of fans cheered for their idol. He will fly back home to Mumbai, some media reports said. The court also ordered the actor to deposit a personal bond of 100,000 rupees ($2,500).
He had spent his time in jail reading, exercising and sketching, a prison official told a local news channel. Khan, 41, was arrested on Saturday, a day after a lower court rejected his appeal against a 2006 conviction for killing a chinkara gazelle in Rajasthan state in 1998. He was sentenced to a five-year term, which he is appealing at the Rajasthan High Court.
He is next due in court on October 24, his lawyer said. According to some media reports at the time, Khan slit the throat of the chinkara he shot and then gave it to chefs to cook at his deluxe hotel in the western desert state. The animals are protected under Indian wildlife law.
Some conservation activists said Khan's celebrity status may have helped his case for bail. "It's a serious crime but obviously the high court sees some merit in giving him bail," said Belinda Wright, director of the Wildlifee Protection Society of India "If he had been a poor, peasant poacher and not so high-profile, I don't believe he would have been granted bail."
Comments
Comments are closed.