Click to play videoNew Delhi: Prime eye witness Sunil Kulkarni now holds the key to cracking the BMW hit-and-run case. Kulkarni identified main accused, Sanjeev Nanda, as one of the three in the car that mowed down six people on a Delhi road in 1999.
More importantly, he said that it was a black car and not a truck as witnesses who turned hostile had claimed.
Now, Kulkarni is the prosecution's best bet, because of what he told the court on Thursday.
Kulkarni says he was walking on South Delhi's Lodhi Road on the fateful night when he saw a black car hit a police picket and then crash into a group of people who were sitting around a fire.
Three people came out of the car after that and one of them was Sanjeev Nanda. Then one of them said: 'Sanj lets get out of here', and they fled the scene.
After two of its main witnesses turned hostile, Kulkarni's testimony has come as big boost to the prosecutions case, but to secure conviction they still have to prove that Nanda was driving the car - something that's not clear from Kulkarni's statement.
Kulkarni said he could not see the driver due to blinding headlights. In the second round of questioning, he claimed that he had heard someone say 'Sanj' instead of 'Sanjeev', as he had claimed last time - an anomaly which the defence will try and exploit.
Says defence lawyer, Ramesh Gupta, "Kulkarni accepted that he was under police pressure and that was why he had named Sanjeev in the first place."
The defence will now cross-examine Kulkarni on May 29 and his answers then will decide whether the victims of this case will get justice after eight long years.
(With inputs from Raheel Khursheed)
(For updates you can share with your friends, follow IBNLive on Facebook, Twitter and Google+)
displayed with permission. Use of the CNN name and/or logo on or as part of CNN-IBN does not derogate from the intellectual property rights of Cable News Network in respect of them.