The Bombay High Court today doubted the evidence of Ravindra Patil, former police bodyguard of Bollywood star Salman Khan and witness in the 2002 hit-and-run case, observing that he was "wholly unreliable."

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May 2015: Justice A R Joshi said this while dictating the verdict in the appeal filed by the actor against the five-year sentence awarded to him by a Mumbai sessions court on May 6 this year. Patil had lodged the FIR in this case on September 28, 2002, hours after the mishap occurred. In the FIR, he did not mention whether Salman was driving the car under the influence of liquor.

However, on October 1, 2002, after the receipt of Salman's blood test report, Patil gave a statement before a Magistrate saying that the actor had taken drinks on the ill-fated day and he had warned him not to drive rashly or else he would meet with an accident but Salman did not pay heed to his advice.

The Judge observed today that the evidence of Patil was doubtful because he had made improvements in his version later when his statement was recorded.

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Ravindra Patil passed away in 2007 and was not available during the trial in the sessions court. However, the prosecution had produced Patil's statement recorded by a Magistrate earlier in which he had implicated Salman. The trial court accepted Patil's statement and said it was admissible in law, based on which the actor was convicted.

Patil's testimony has been a subject of controversy for month now

July 2015: Desai made submissions before Justice A R Joshi of the Bombay high court, which heard the actor's appeal against his conviction and five-year sentence for culpable homicide not amounting to murder for killing one person on September 28, 2002, after his car rammed into a Bandra laundry. Desai's arguments were that Patil had in his cross-examination by the actor's earlier lawyers before a Bandra Magistrate in 2006 effectively denied his own statement about Salman being drunk. So his deposition holds no evidentiary value against Khan, Desai said. Patil died in 2007 .

The last time when someone really considered Ravindra Patil as a 'Human Being'

The last time when someone really considered Ravindra Patil as a “Human Being” was when he was fighting for life in a Municipal hospital, suffering from a strain of tuberculosis that was drug resistant. He was possibly coughing out his last breath on the cold hospital floor, alone. His family had cut him out of their life, and they didn’t even claim or collect his body – they simply didn’t care.

If you see a before and after photo of Patil, you’d swear he’d survived a torture camp. That’s not what you expect to see for a former police officer.

In early 2002, Salman had filed a police report complaining about threatening calls from the underworld. The police concluded that there was a threat to the actor’s life. So they appointed the then 24-year-old constable Ravindra Patil as Salman’s unarmed bodyguard, to shadow him everywhere.

On the 28th of September that year, Salman was drinking at Juhu’s JW Mariott hotel in Juhu, while Patil waited in his car outside.

Everyone knows what happened next –Salman drove his SUV over pavement dwellers

He denied all charges the next morning when taken into custody, and Patil recounted seeing Salman so stunned that people were crying under his car’s wheels. So shocked, that he fled, instead of taking victims to the hospital.

Patil, the only eye witness, decided Salman’s fate, and only Patil knew if Salman was drunk, speeding, and had been warned by Patil to slow down. All these were true, but Salman denied it all. Other witnesses changed their narrative and soon turned hostile, but not Patil. This, despite claiming to have faced pressure to change his statement from Salman’s lawyers.

Fast forward to 2007, when he was found on the streets of Mumbai, suffering from TB for over 2 years. His family, the police, the media, and even India’s most benevolent and kind actor - Salman Khan of Being Human fame - everyone had forgotten about him.