A magistrate convicted actor Aditya Pancholi on Saturday and sentenced him to one-year simple imprisonment in a 2005 assault case filed by a neighbour over a car parking issue.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs 20,000 on the actor. Following pronouncement of the judgment, the court granted him bail on a request made by his lawyer M R Rangnekar. The actor, who was present in court, was granted a bail of Rs 15,000 with surety and subsequently a cash bail of Rs 12,000. When a punishment is for less than three years, the law empowers courts to grant bail the same day and the sentence is deemed as suspended.

The court convicted and sentenced him only under Indian Penal Code Section 325 for an offence of voluntarily causing grievous hurt. It acquitted him of two other offenses under sections 504 (intentional insult to cause breach of public peace) and 502-II (criminal intimidation). The actor, who had denied all charges, told TOI later that he plans to appeal the guilty verdict. The 20-page verdict was handed over to him by 5.45pm. It said the “charge is proved“ against Pancholi.

Andheri metropolitan magistrate Amitabh Panchbhai passed the order in a case registered over a decade ago by the complainant, Pratik Pashine, who lived in the same Andheri West building as the actor.

The complainant accused Pancholi of having assaulted him and fracturing his nose over a car parking argument. But the actor who denied the charge said the “FIR filed in 2005 was an afterthought, as it was filed a day after the alleged incident“. His lawyer said a non-cognizable complaint registered a day earlier, by the complainant, had mentioned only simple hurt under Section 323. He argued the complainant went to a private hospital first and then to civic Cooper Hospital to show an alleged fracture and filed the FIR. He argued that no case was made out against Pancholi.

The actor's case was that one of his visitors had parked his car in the building compound parking slot that belonged to the complainant, who then had blocked the vehicle by parking his own vehicle across it. As a result, there was some argument between the complainant and the visitor. Pancholi too was called down by the building watchman at the time.

The FIR lodged by Versova police station had also mentioned IPC sections 323 for voluntarily causing hurt, which attracts a maximum of one-year simple imprisonment with or without a Rs 1,000 fine or only a fine; 504, which attracts up to two years; and 506-II for criminal intimidation. The chargesheet was filed only in 2009 and the first hearing was held in January 2010 at Andheri magistrate court.