I was forced to testify against Salman: witness

A key witness in a 1998 poaching case, for which Bollywood star Salman Khan was sentenced to five years in prison, has said that he had been pressurised to make a statement that he had seen the actor killing an endangered chinkara.

Harish Dulani, who drove the vehicle that was used by Salman, told NDTV in Jodhpur on Tuesday, "I was made to say these things. The forest department officials and police made me make the statement."

"They pressured my father...and my father said I should do as these officials wanted or else I would face problems," said Dulani, who was found guilty of

turning hostile by the same court that convicted Salman for killing the chinkara.

Dulani had turned hostile in 2001 and has been absconding since then.

The Jodhpur court convicted Salman in April and sentenced him to five years' rigorous imprisonment for poaching a chinkara in the Ghoda Farm area in 1998 while he was shooting for the movie Hum Saath Saath Hai.

The same court had in February convicted the star in a separate case for poaching two blackbucks in 1998 and sentenced him to rigorous imprisonment for a year.