DECCAN INQUIRER
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Editor: Nagaraja.M.R.. Vol.02.....Issue.01…...........06/01/2021
Sacked Gujarat IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt moves SC
against refusal to suspend life term sentence
The petitioner questioned validity of HC's
order when it admitted his appeal for consideration but refused to suspend the
sentence
Sacked IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt has approached
the Supreme Court, challenging the Gujarat High Court's order, which declined
to suspend his sentence of life term imposed by a Jamnagar court on June 20,
2019 in a 30-year-old custodial death case.
Bhatt is currently
lodged at Palanpur jail. The officer, who had earlier filed an affidavit
against Narendra Modi over his 'role' in 2002 Gujarat riots, claimed that the
HC failed to appreciate that he had been persecuted by the state agencies from
2011, though they defended him since 1990.
A bench of Justices
Ashok Bhushan, R Subhash Reddy and M R Shah is likely to take up Bhatt's
petition on Monday filed through advocate Farrukh Rasheed.
The petitioner questioned validity of HC's
order of September 25, 2019 when it admitted his appeal for consideration but
refused to suspend the sentence. As an interim measure, during the pendency of
his appeal, he said his liberty must be restored as his conviction has not been
confirmed.
Bhatt
contended that the High Court failed to see that the present incident related
to death of Prabhudas Vaishnani happened 18 days after his release from police
custody on November 18, 1990. Vaishnani, along with 133 accused, were arrested
after violent incidents were reported in Jamnagar due to arrest of L K Advani
in Bihar during his 'Rath Yatra'. Bhatt was given charge of Additional SP,
Jamnagar.
"The HC ought to
have appreciated that the trial court did not consider evidence of court
witness P P Pandey, Investigating Officer, then SP, CID Crime, Ahmedabad, who
recorded statement of different police officers, clearly indicating no beating
or ill-treatment of the arrested accused," his plea claimed.
Due to ongoing
"political vendetta", he claimed, those witnesses who negated the
alleged incident, were dropped.
He also claimed that charges
were framed against him without due sanction from the state government.
Sanjiv Bhatt Case: In 16 Years, Gujarat Saw 180 Custodial Deaths –
and Zero Convictions
Law enforcement in Gujarat left no stone
unturned to ensure Bhatt was incarcerated. That deviates significantly from the
norm.
While Sanjiv Bhatt’s sentence to life imprisonment in
a 1990 custodial death case has raised questions once again on the consequences
of the IPS officer’s claims about Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 riots,
a Times of India report
has shown that Gujarat isn’t in the habit of punishing other policemen accused
of the same crime.
The report highlights, with the
help of data accessed from the National Crime Records Bureau, that as many as
180 custodial deaths took place in Gujarat between 2001 and 2016 (the last year for
which numbers are available). However, no police personnel have been punished
for any of these deaths in this time.
The countrywide numbers are even worse — only 26 policemen have
been convicted for 1,557 custodial deaths, most from Uttar Pradesh.
Notwithstanding the dire need for accountability in the
police force, the figures draw attention to the context in which Bhatt (along
with another policeman, Pravinsinh Zala) was found guilty in a case that
is nearly 30 years old.
1990 custodial death case
Bhatt’s case dates back to November 1990, when he had detained
several people (the numbers vary between 110 and 150 in different reports) for
rioting in Jamjodhpur town on the day of a Bharat Bandh, called to coincide
with the end of Bharatiya Janata Party veteran L.K. Advani’s rath yatra. The
1988-batch IPS officer, who was then additional superintendent of police of
Jamnagar district, had been send to Jamjodhpur by then superintendent of
police, T.S. Bisht, Indian
Express has reported.
Among those detained was one Prabhudas Vaishnani, who was released
on bail after nine days and allegedly died ten days after his release, while
undergoing treatment in a hospital. His brother, Amrutlal, had then filed a
complaint alleging custodial torture against Bhatt and eight other policemen.
To Express,
Amrutlal said that Prabhudas was a farmer and not responsible for rioting at
all.
Cognisance of the case had been taken by a magistrate in 1995, but
its trial had been stayed by the Gujarat high court till 2011, when the stay
was vacated.
A week ago, last Wednesday, the Supreme Court had refused
to entertain Bhatt’s plea seeking to examine 11 additional witnesses in
the case. The former policeman had moved the apex court claiming that while
nearly 300 witnesses had been listed by prosecution in the case, only 32 were
actually examined. Many crucial witnesses, including three policemen who were a
part of the team which investigated the offence, were left out, he had claimed.
The Gujarat government had termed Bhatt’s move a “tactic to delay
the trial”.
A report released by Human Rights
Watch in 2016 revealed that 591 people had died in police custody in India
between 2010 and 2015 alone, according to official data. Representational
image. Photo: Steven Depolo/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Incriminating numbers
In what is no great testament to either the legal system or the
concept of accountability in Indian law enforcement, the narrative surrounding
custodial deaths until now has largely focused on the lack of action taken
against police personnel. A much talked about report released by Human
Rights Watch in 2016 revealed that 591 people had died in police custody in
India between 2010 and 2015 alone, according to official data. Police, the
report revealed, were loath to follow arrest procedures, their impunity
bolstered by a system that allows them to blame such deaths in custody “on
suicide, illness, or natural causes.”
While the NCRB data considered by TOI for their report does not mention
figures relevant to the period during which the custodial death for which Bhatt
has been convicted took place, a 1992 Amnesty International report on the issue in India
quoted 415 custodial deaths in the country between 1985 and 1991. The report
notes that within that period, only two cases of action having been taken in
situations of custodial violence had come within the purview of the surveyors.
first was for a case of the rape of a tribal women in 1986. A
Supreme Court commission investigating the allegation found sufficient evidence
to conclude that four police officers and two doctors could be charged with
“having hatched the conspiracy for destroying the evidence and thereby keeping
the accused constables from being prosecuted in a court of law”.
“The most recent case known to
Amnesty International resulted in a Gujarat High Court judgment on October 23,
1991; six police officers were sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for beating
Kantuji Mohansinh to death in 1982 and destroying the evidence of their
offence. The same police officers had previously been acquitted in May 1983
but, in the only such case known to Amnesty International, the state appealed
against that judgment to the court which set aside the acquittal and convicted
the police officers.”
Indeed, like the Amnesty report suggests, the untold custom is
that of the state government championing the cause of its police in cases of
custodial violence or deaths. Which brings us back to the particular escape
from custom seen in Bhatt’s case.
Why Bhatt?
Gujarat law enforcement’s efforts in stripping Bhatt of his
powers, sacking him, taking him into custody for a 22-year-old
drug possessions case and arguing for his life imprisonment in the custodial death
case can be considered particularly insistent.
His wife Shweta, in an interview to The Wire, had alleged
likewise and detailed extraordinary steps taken to particularly humiliate and
corner Bhatt and his family. Their security cover was allegedly withdrawn
without prior intimation, agency officials allegedly walked into their bedroom
as Shweta was asleep seeking to question her husband, and the municipal
corporation allegedly sent labourers to demolish ‘illegal structures’ in their
23-year-old house.
The alleged harassment began in 2011, when Bhatt filed an
affidavit in the Supreme Court claiming to have attended a meeting on the eve
of the 2002 Gujarat riots. He alleged that Modi, who was then chief minister
and is now prime minister, at the meeting asked senior IPS officers to to let
Hindus “vent out their anger against Muslims” in the aftermath of the Godhra
train carnage.
In the affidavit, he also alleged that it was discussed in the
meeting that the bodies of the Hindu pilgrims who had died in the Sabarmati
Express would be brought to Ahmedabad before being cremated. Senior police
officials had, according to Bhatt, then advised against this as they feared it
would incite religious violence.
Several police officers investigating the 2002 violence and the
series of alleged fake encounters have reportedly been targeted by the Gujarat
government and continue to face consequences of their involvement even
now. Some of the officers targeted were Rahul Sharma and R.B. Sreekumar,
who like Bhatt had deposed
before the Nanavati Commission regarding the government’s culpability in the riots. Satish
Verma, part of the SIT probing the Ishrat Jahan encounter case and Kuldip
Sharma, who pursued a corruption case which involved Amit Shah, were also
reported targeted.
In late 2018, a Rajnish Rai, a Gujarat cadre IPS officer who was
the first investigator in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh fake encounter case, was
suspended by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
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