Aditya Pancholi gets one year in jail for assault

In a setback to Bollywood actor Aditya Pancholi, a railway mobile court in Andheri on Saturday morning convicted and sentenced him to one-year simple imprisonment and also imposed a fine of Rs 20,000 on him. The court held the actor guilty of assaulting his neighbour during a dispute over car parking on the society premises. However, accepting the application of the defence, the court granted bail to Pancholi on furnishing the fine amount for the period till filing of appeal to challenge the court order is permitted.

The prosecution’s case is that on August 21, 2005, the complainant — Prateek Pashni — had gone to the market for shopping and when he came back to his residential society in the evening he saw that a car was already parked at the place allotted to him for parking his vehicle. Mr Pashni then parked his car behind the vehicle.

Later, the watchman of the society called Pashni on the intercom and after a short argument, the latter agreed to remove his car. Mr Pashni has alleged that when he came down to take the car out of the way, Pancholi started assaulting him. According to Mr Pashni, Pancholi had also assaulted his father when he tried to intervene.

Public prosecutor A.H. Nandgiri had told the court that the next morning Mr Pashni registered a complaint with local police station. The trial had been pending since then and judgment was reserved last month.