A court in Gujarat’s Porbandar district on Saturday acquitted former Indian Police Service officer Sanjiv Bhatt in a 1997 custodial torture case, Live Law reported.
Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Mukesh Pandya noted that the prosecution had failed to “prove the case beyond reasonable doubt” and did not obtain permission to prosecute Bhatt, who was the superintendent of police in Porbandar at the time of the alleged incident.
Bhatt faced charges of causing hurt to extort a confession and causing hurt with a dangerous weapon under sections of the Indian Penal Code.
The case against Bhatt was registered on a complaint by Naran Jadhav, who accused the former police officer of torturing him in custody to extract a confession in a Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act and Arms Act case.
The complaint alleged that on July 5, 1997, Jadhav – one of 22 persons accused in a 1994 arms recovery case – was taken from Sabarmati Central Jail to Bhatt’s house in Porbandar, where he was tortured with electric shocks.
Jadhav had filed a formal complaint before a judicial magistrate who ordered an inquiry. In December 1998, a case was registered against Bhatt and a police constable. A first information report was filed in 2013 but the case against the constable was dismissed after his death.
Bhatt is currently lodged at Rajkot Jail, where he is serving a life sentence in a 1990 custodial death case and a 20-year sentence in a 1996 drug-planting case.
The 1990 case dates back to Bhatt’s tenure as the additional superintendent of police in Jamnagar. A former police constable named Pravinsingh Zala was also convicted in the matter and sentenced to life.
Bhatt is alleged to have detained more than 100 persons in connection with communal riots that broke out in Jamnagar district after the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for a Bharat bandh on October 30, 1990.
One of the detainees, Prabhudas Vaishnani, died in hospital of renal failure after he was released. Vaishnani’s family alleged that custodial torture by Bhatt and his colleagues had led to the death. It was alleged that the police had prevented the detainees from drinking water, which damaged Vaishnani’s kidneys.
The Bharat bandh had been called to protest the arrest of BJP leader LK Advani, who was the party’s national president at the time. Advani had been leading a rath yatra from Gujarat’s Somnath to Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, which eventually culminated in the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
In January, the Gujarat High Court dismissed Bhatt’s appeal against his conviction and the life sentence handed to him.
In March, a Gujarat court sentenced Sanjiv Bhatt to 20 years imprisonment in the 1996 case, in which the former police officer was accused of planting drugs to frame a Rajasthan-based lawyer in Palanpur.
In April 2011, Bhatt moved the Supreme Court against Narendra Modi – who was the chief minister of Gujarat at the time – and accused him of encouraging the 2002 communal riots in the state that left 1,000 people dead, most of them Muslims.
Bhatt claimed that he had attended a meeting at Modi’s residence on February 27, 2002, during which the former chief minister allegedly told police officers to “allow Hindus to vent their anger”.
Bhatt was suspended soon after he made the claims and was sacked from the police service in 2015. His department cited several reasons for his dismissal, including various counts of indiscipline including staying absent from duty without permission and defying the orders of superior officers.
Bhatt was arrested again in July 2022 by a Special Investigation Team for allegedly committing forgery and fabricating evidence in a case related to the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Limited-time offer: Big stories, small price. Keep independent media alive. Become a Scroll member today!
Our journalism is for everyone. But you can get special privileges by buying an annual Scroll Membership. Sign up today!