Mr. Khan’s bail was set at some $1,500. His lawyers also called for the suspension of a five-year prison sentence delivered on Thursday.
NEW DELHI — The Bollywood star Salman Khan was granted bail on Saturday while he appealed a conviction for killing two rare antelopes, which came with a five-year jail sentence. It’s a further twist in a case that has gone on for almost two decades.
Mr. Khan was convicted and sentenced by a court in the city of Jodhpur, in Rajasthan State, on Thursday, and spent the next two nights in jail.
The decision to grant him bail, which was set at some $1,500, followed the planned transfer of 87 judges, including at least one who heard the bail application, by the Rajasthan High Court late Friday evening for unspecified administrative reasons.
Mr. Khan’s lawyers have requested that the court in Jodhpur also suspend his sentence. The next hearing is scheduled for May 7.
The case stretches back to 1998, when, according to prosecutors Mr. Khan, one of India’s most popular stars, went hunting with several other actors outside a forest reserve near Jodhpur while shooting a film.
Locals said that they heard gunshots just after midnight on Oct. 1 and rushed to the forest, where they thought they recognized the driver of a vehicle as Mr. Khan, who was also accused of killing several protected deer in the area.
Reports of the hunting trip set off protests — the antelopes, called blackbucks, are not only protected by wildlife laws, but also considered sacred by the Bishnoi community in the area. Mr. Khan was taken into custody.
Eight years later, he was convicted of killing the two antelopes and sentenced to five years in prison. But Mr. Khan appealed the decision, and the sentence was suspended.
The actor, 52, had several subsequent brushes with the law. He was tried and acquitted on a charge of killing a homeless man while driving drunk in Mumbai, and was also accused of domestic abuse by a former girlfriend, the actress Aishwarya Rai. He strongly denies it.
The Rajasthan High Court acquitted Mr. Khan in 2016 of shooting the protected deer, known as chinkara, overturning previous convictions.
Mr. Khan has long maintained that he did not kill the antelopes, which he has said died of natural causes. Instead, he has accused the forest department of framing him “for publicity.”
After his conviction on Thursday, prominent figures in India’s film industry rallied to Mr. Khan’s defense, noting his “humanitarian work” and calling for leniency in the bail proceedings.
Mahesh Manjrekar, an actor and filmmaker, told the Press Trust of India that Mr. Khan had been treated unfairly. “He is human, at the end of the day,” he said. “But when he makes a mistake, it is blown out of proportion.”
After Mr. Khan was granted bail, throngs of fans celebrated outside his home in Mumbai, holding up banners that read, “We support Salman Khan” in big, blocky letters.
Other observers were more subdued, attributing Mr. Khan’s success in fighting off legal difficulties over the years in part to his celebrity status.
“What a shame,” Rana Ayyub, a well-known journalist, wrote on Twitter .
