A Mumbai magistrate court has reissued a bailable warrant against Malaika Arora for failing to appear as a witness in the 2012 assault case involving Saif Ali Khan and others.

MUMBAI: A magistrate’s court on Monday reissued a bailable warrant of Rs 5,000 against actor and model Malaika Arora for failing to appear as a witness in the 2012 assault case against actor Saif Ali Khan, her brother-in-law Shakeel Ladak, and Bilal Amrohi. The matter was adjourned to April 29.
On March 29, Malaika’s sister, actress Amrita Arora Ladakh, deposing as the third witness, told the court said she saw Saif Ali Khan being punched and hit by the same man who barged into their private enclosure at a Colaba five-star hotel’s restaurant and aggressively reprimanded the group for allegedly being loud.
The trial commenced last year. Malaika Arora, is listed as a witness as she was also present with the group that dined at the restaurant on February 21, 2012. Amrita (46) had said that a group comprising Khan, Shakeel, Amrohi, Khan’s wife and actor Kareena Kapoor Khan, actor Karisma Kapoor, Malaika, designer Vikram Phadnis, and others decided to dine at the restaurant.
The case is registered at Colaba police station. Explaining the alleged trigger for the spat at a five-star hotel in Colaba, police said a man from South Africa, Iqbal Sharma, protested against the raucous chatter of the actor’s group when Saif Ali Khan allegedly threatened him and his father-in-law Ramanbhai Patel and went on to punch Sharma on the nose, fracturing it.
In 2014, a magistrate’s court framed charges of assault against Saif Ali Khan, Shakeel, and Amrohi. The trio was charged under sections 325 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code. Subsequently, a plea was moved by the prosecution, submitting that the police report and the statement of the witnesses, Patel and his daughter Tarina Sharma, showed that the former was also assaulted by Khan and his two friends but unfortunately the actor’s name was not mentioned as one of the persons who assaulted him.
On March 4, 2017, the magistrate’s court added the charge, saying, “…that you accused on the abovementioned date, time and place, in furtherance of your common intention, voluntarily caused hurt to the witness, Ramanbhai Patel, by slapping on his cheek and as well as beating him, and thereby committed an offence punishable under section 323.”
Khan then moved the sessions court against the order. In his plea, he said when the evidence of the complainant (Sharma) was recorded in 2017, the prosecution moved a plea to modify the charge against him and the two others on the grounds that his name was inadvertently left out when charges were framed with respect to Patel’s assault.
The actor claimed that the prosecution moved the plea as Sharma, a non-resident Indian, was not attending the matter and they wanted Patel to be the main witness. In 2019, the sessions court rejected his plea.
In 2023, a magistrate’s court framed an additional charge of voluntarily causing hurt to a witness against the actor, paving the way for it to begin the trial. The accused pleaded not guilty to the charges.