Salman Khan spoke to Senior Correspondent Rohit Parihar about the blackbuck case in Jodhpur. Excerpts:
Q. How do you feel about the case?
A. This is life. They are doing their duty.
Q. Do people feel differently about you?
A. All important persons have good and bad qualities. After the blackbuck case, everyone feels Salman is a bad guy.
Q. Are you suffering?
A. The entire experience is a punishment for me, far more rigorous than the days I spent in jail.
Q. What was the experience in custody?
A. I was rudely woken up around 6-6:30 a.m. The toilets were stinking and the bed I feel humiliated. I have never treated even my servants like this.
Q. But this is what every accused gets.
A. No, this is what hurts me. I am not being treated as a common man.
Q. How can you say that?
A. Where else are officers specially flown out to investigate the death of a black-buck and the case file contains 329 pages, all laminated. And how many common men were put in jail even before conviction for allegedly killing a chinkara?
Q . You mean the prosecution is not fair?
A. There is something wrong. How many times do you have two postmortems even for a murdering a human? And, in Mumbai, where so many murders take place in broad daylight, you don't get even one witness. Here, for something supposedly done in the jungle, there are 51.
Q. Have environmentalists and the Bishnois turned against you?
A. I don't know what precedent they want to set by making me a target. Did you notice someone hurling a stone at me? This despite the fact I was so cordial.
--indiatoday