Salman Khan hit-and-run case: Other high-profile hit-and-run cases

Bollywood actor Salman Khan was sentenced to five years in prison in the 2002 hit-and-run case which killed one person and injured four others when his Toyota Land Cruiser mowed five people sleeping on the pavement outside a bakery in Bandra on September 28, 2002. The case took 13 years to come to an end when the Mumbai Sessions court held him guilty of all charges on Wednesday. The judge said Salman was drunk when the accident occurred.

Salman was in jail for some 17 days in 2002. The main prosecution witness, Ravindra Patil, the police guard who was in Salman's security detail, and who filed the first FIR in the case died of tuberculosis in 2007.

On March 31, this year, Salman's driver Ashok Singh was examined as defence witness. He said he was driving the car and not the actor, almost 13 years after the incident.

Here are the two other prominent cases of persons who ran over people while driving vehicles under the influence of alcohol.



Sanjeev Nanda and the 1999 Delhi hit-and-run case

Sanjeev NandaSanjeev NandaSanjeev Nanda, the grandson of Admiral SM Nanda, was sentenced to 2 years' imprisonment by a trial court almost 10 years after Nanda ran his BMW over six people, including three Delhi Police officers who manned the checkpoint at Lodhi Road intersection, the site of the accident, on January 10, 1999.

Though Nanda and the other accused were initially acquitted and released in a trial in 1999, he was found guilty in 2008 in a re-trial. The accident occurred when Nanda was returning with friends from a late night party in Gurgaon. Reports said Nanda took the wheel despite his parents telling him not to.

Two constables and two others died on the spot, and another policeman and a bystander sucumbed in hospital. After the 1999 trial acquitted him, media outrage forced a re-trial in 2008 and he was found guilty of killing the six people. The Supreme Court in 2012 reduced his prison sentence to the two years he had spent in prison, added a substantial penalty, and sentenced him to do community service for two years.

Alistair Pereira and the 2006 Mumbai hit-and-run case

Alistair Anthony PereiraAlistair Anthony Pereira, the scion of a family of realtors, drove his Toyota Corolla onto a group of construction workers sleeping along Mumbai's Carter Road when he was driving drunk on November 12, 2006. Seven people died and eight were injured. Pereira was sentenced to six months in jail by a local court leading to criticism which prompted the Bombay High Court to try the case and enhance the jail term to three years while convicting Pereira. Pereira was returning from a party at a five-star hotel when the accident occurred.

On appeal to the Supreme Court after the Bombay HC order sentenced him to 3 years in 2007, Pereira was granted bail but the apex court upheld the order. The Supreme Court said it cannot increase punishment since the state government had not sought more punishment. The HC had slammed the Mumbai police for shoddy investigation in the case, including not providing urine and blood reports on time and the failure to examine the other passengers in the car.