A dark Diwali for former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt

It is a classic case of ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’ for former Gujarat Police officer Sanjiv Bhatt who is in jail since the last two months in a 22-year-old case.

Bhatt was picked up from his home on September 5 for ‘questioning’ by the state CID Crime Branch in a narcotics planting case that has been pending since 1996.

His prosecutors first sought his remand to question him further. But the court turned down the remand plea. Then, when Bhatt’s application for bail came up for hearing, the advocates for prosecution presented themselves late in the court and sought more time to put forward their case against the bail application. The next date for hearing was fixed for October 30. But this time, the judge was on leave. So, the hearing of the case was fixed for November 12 when the court resumes after the Diwali vacation.

Thus, while the free world celebrates the festival of lights, for Bhatt, it would be a dark Diwali behind the bars.

Ironically, it was the Gujarat government which had petitioned the Supreme Court in 2000 to exonerate Bhatt and other policemen in the 1996 case arguing that errors made in the course of an investigation could not be held against the officer if they were discharging their duty in good faith. The Supreme Court had granted reprieve to Bhatt then.

Having got this relief, Bhatt, an IPS officer, continued to serve the Gujarat Police and was in the Intelligence Bureau of the state when the burning of the coach of the Sabarmati Express claimed 56 lives on February 27, 2002.

What earned Bhatt the wrath of the Narendra Modi government was his filing an affidavit in the Supreme Court in 2011, in which he stated that the then Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, had stoked communal violence after the burning of the train.

In his affidavit before the Supreme Court, Bhatt claimed that he was present when Modi told senior police officials to let “people vent their frustration”.

Thereafter began Bhatt’s continuous and prolonged persecution by the BJP government. At first, the government withdrew his security guards in July. Then, the BJP-controlled Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation suddenly began demolishing parts of his home without any warning.

“The labourers turned up one morning and began breaking our home down which was built 23 years ago. They did not even let me remove personal items from the cupboards. They demolished the kitchen, washrooms and parts of the bedrooms, while making sure to do irreparable damage to the structural integrity of the entire house,” narrated Shweta Bhatt, Sanjiv’s wife.

Then on September 5, the CID Crime branch entered his house at 8am, to pick him up for recording his statement with regard to the 1996 case when he was the Banaskantha district superintendent of police.

On April 30, 1996, after an anonymous tip-off, the police raided a hotel room in Palanpur. The police verified the hotel register, found a guest with the name of Sumer Singh Rajpurohit, a resident of Pali in Rajasthan, and then conducted the raid and seized 1.15 kg of opium. An FIR was filed against Rajpurohit. On May 3, 1996, Rajpurohit, a lawyer, was arrested from his Pali residence. He was produced before a local Palanpur court the next day, which remanded him to police custody till May 10. However, during an ID parade, eyewitnesses were not able to identify him as the guest at the hotel following which he was released on bail. Six days later, charges against him were dropped after.

Five months later, on October 17, 1996, Rajpurohit sent a complaint to the chief judicial magistrate in Pali, alleging that the arrest was part of a conspiracy to force him to give up his claim to a shared property. The conspiracy, he claimed, was masterminded by Bhatt and other police officials at the behest of Justice R.R. Jain, who retired as Gujarat High Court judge.

A case was filed against Bhatt, Vyas and others, based on this complaint at the Pali-Kotwali police station.