Apex Court rejects cop’s plea challenging Gujarat HC order; IPS officer wanted charges dropped.
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to grant any relief to suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in a 21-year-old alleged custodial death case registered against him in Jamnagar district.
Bhatt had approached the Apex Court after Gujarat high court turned down his plea challenging the state government’s move to withdraw the revision application in the Jamjodhpur case.
Now, Bhatt will make all his submissions before the court in Jamnagar challenging the government’s move as the Supreme Court granted him liberty to do so while declining to entertain his plea. “The Supreme Court has given us liberty to submit all details before the lower court where our case is going on,” said IH Saiyad, counsel for Bhatt.
Bhatt, who is at loggerheads with chief minister Narendra Modi over the 2002 communal riot cases, is facing charges of custodial death of one Prabhudas Vaishnani in Jamjodhpur in 1990. Bhatt was then assistant superintendent of police there.
As the case goes, Bhatt had detained around 150 people during a communal riot in Jamjodhpur town. One of those arrested, Prabhudas Vaishnani, had died at a hospital after his release. Vaishnani’s brother Amrut had then lodged an FIR against Bhatt and six other police officials, accusing them of killing his sibling by torturing him in detention.
On October 10 this year, the high court had allowed the trial court to frame charges against Bhatt in the case while rejecting his plea that challenged the Jamnagar sessions court’s order. The court had permitted the state government to withdraw its plea to drop charges related to the custodial death case.
The government’s plea in the trial court to withdraw charges against Bhatt and other police officials was pending with it since 1996.
The government had refused sanction for Bhatt’s prosecution. A magisterial court, however, had refused to accept the closure report in the case, so the government then filed a revision application in the Jamnagar sessions court requesting that the charges be dropped against Bhatt and other police officials.
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