The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a petition filed by the wife of former Gujarat Police officer Sanjiv Bhatt against the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation’s move to demolish part of their house, LiveLaw reported. Bhatt had filed an affidavit against Narendra Modi when he was chief minister of Gujarat.
On July 25, the top court had stayed an order against the demolition after Shweta Bhatt, the officer’s wife and a former Congress candidate, filed a petition countering the civic body’s order. “Earlier you came to us... we protected you,” NDTV quoted the Supreme Court as saying on Monday. “We examined the matter. Dismissed.”
Bhatt’s neighbour Pravinchandra Patel had moved the Gujarat High Court in 2012 against an allegedly illegal structure in the officer’s house and demanded that it be razed.
Bhatt’s allegations in the Godhra riots case
In April 2011, Bhatt had moved the Supreme Court accusing Narendra Modi, who was Gujarat chief minister at the time, of encouraging the Godhra riots that left 1,000 people, most of them Muslim, dead. Bhatt claimed that he had attended a meeting at Modi’s residence on February 27, 2002, at which the chief minister allegedly told his officers to “allow Hindus to vent their anger”.
Bhatt’s allegations were refuted by the Special Investigation Team that was tasked with the inquiry as the testimonies of the other people in the room did not corroborate with his account.
Bhatt was suspended soon after he made the claims and was sacked in 2015. His department cited several reasons for his dismissal including various counts of indiscipline such as staying absent from duty without permission and defying the orders of superior officers.
Bhatt had denied the charges against him. “This so-called ‘unauthorised absence from duty’ pertains to the period when I was deposing before the SIT and the Nanavati Commission” inquiring into the Gujarat riots,” he had said.
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