Mumbai: Bollywood star Salman Khan's lawyer Thursday rejected the prosecution's claim in the 2002 hit-and-run case that the actor was drunk at the time, saying that the blood sample sent for chemical analysis was not his.
Advocate Shrikant Shivade, Khan's lawyer, claimed that the sample, which showed 62 mg of alcohol per 100 ml, had not been extracted from the actor.
Questioning the "professional competency" of the chemical analyst who performed the test, Shivade said that the prescribed procedure was not followed.
Referring to the analyst's statement in the court, the lawyer said he had received 4 ml blood sample, though 6 ml blood had been drawn from Khan for the test. "The shortfall of 2 ml is enough to draw an inference that the sample taken from accused and the one sent to lab were not the same," he said.
The test was conducted at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Kalina in suburban Mumbai which does not have certification from International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) or accreditation of National Board of Accreditation (NAB), the defence lawyer said.
"Rules were violated and hence prosecution has failed to prove that the accused's blood contained alcohol to the tune of 62 mg per 100 ml," Shivade argued before the sessions judge D W Deshpande.
Khan (49) is facing the charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. He is accused of ramming his SUV into a bakery in suburban Bandra on September 28, 2002, killing one person and injuring four others.
