The actors were present in the court to get their statements recorded before the court of chief judicial magistrate (CJM) Dalpat Singh Rajpurohit.
The CJM court had earlier asked the Bollywood celebrities to appear on January 25 to record their statement. However, the stars did not appear on that day citing security reasons.
The court then postponed the matter for yesterday.
The case against all cine stars is pending since 1998, but it could not come for hearing and remained stalled due to several appeals and revisions in the higher court in other connected matters.
During the course of the hearing yesterday, Salman replied to as many as 65 questions posed by the court in regard to the allegations levelled by the prosecution witnesses.
Salman and the other actors also replied to a few general questions like names, father’s name, age, residential address and caste.
To a question with regard to his religion, Salman said that “I’m Hindu and Muslim both. I’m Bhartiya”. He subsequently said in English “I’m an Indian”.
Asked about the allegations levelled by the prosecution, the stars pleaded “not guilty”. Salman in his reply said that he couldn’t have gone out for poaching due to security reasons.
“We will produce defence witnesses to counter the prosecution as all the allegations are untrue,” Hastimal Sarswat, Salman’s advocate said.
Relatives of the film stars, including Salman’s sister Alvira and his bodyguard Shera, were also present during the court proceedings.
All the five Bollywood actors are accused of poaching blackbucks on the midnight of October 1-2, 1998, during the shooting of a Hindi movie.
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