(Top) Roshan : Forgetful, Priety : Gutsy

Mumbai, Feb. 9: Filmmaker Rakesh Roshan, who was shot at and wounded by two Abu Salem gang members five years ago, today failed to identify the accused during an in-camera trial.

Roshan, who was deposing before a magistrate, said five years had passed since the attack and he could not remember what the assailants looked like. The filmmaker was shot at point-blank range on January 21, 2000, while leaving his office. He was rushed to Nanavati hospital where he was operated on and a bullet was removed from his chest.

Police arrested five suspects owing allegiance to the Salem gang. Of them, two attacked Roshan while the rest were part of the conspiracy to kill him. Tight security was maintained in and around the court when Roshan appeared as a witness along with his lawyer Deepesh Mehta.

Roshan, however, supported the prosecution?s case that alleged henchmen of the don attacked him after he refused to pay them extortion money. Earlier, in December 2002, he had told a special court trying diamond merchant and film financier Bharat Shah that he had never received any extortion threat from either Salem or gangster Chhota Shakeel, hampering the government?s efforts to unravel the nexus between the film industry and the underworld.

A day earlier, Shahrukh Khan had been declared a ?hostile? witness after he denied having spoken to Shakeel and refused to identify Rahim, who he had earlier hinted was Shakeel?s messenger.

Although more than a dozen Bollywood personalities were interrogated to find out if they had been threatened by the underworld, only Preity Zinta ? the heroine of Chori Chori, Chupke Chupke, a film alleged to have been funded by Shakeel ? had acknowledged it.

?She is the only man in the film world,? said a police officer investigating links between Bollywood and the underworld.