Bhatt goes to jail, wife sees threat to his life from ‘police under CM

Ahmedabad, Oct. 1: Gujarat IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who has accused chief minister Narendra Modi of inaction in the 2002 Gujarat riots, was today remanded in judicial custody for 15 days after a court rejected a plea for police remand.


The police had asked for a seven-day custody of the officer who was arrested yesterday.


Earlier in the day, Bhatt’s wife Sweta had written to the state police chief and the Ahmedabad police commissioner saying she feared for her husband’s life. Sweta was also not allowed to meet Bhatt this morning.


The police officer is accused of forcing a constable, K.D. Pant, to file a false affidavit claiming he had seen Bhatt at the chief minister’s bungalow the night before the riots began. Bhatt had told the apex court last April that at the meeting, Modi had asked the police to let “Hindus vent their anger”.


Modi and then state police chief K. Chakravarthy have denied that Bhatt, who was deputy commissioner with the state intelligence bureau then, was at the meeting.


The officer was suspended last month for going on “unauthorised leave”.


In the letter to the top police officers, Sweta wrote that she and her husband would “never get justice in Gujarat” as the atmosphere was so vitiated. At the time she wrote to director-general of police Chittaranjan Singh and Ahmedabad police chief Sudhir Sinha, Bhatt was in the custody of the crime branch.


Sweta wrote the crime branch officers “are encounter specialists”. “I can’t trust them at all. I fear for his life.”


Bhatt’s residence at Memnagar was raided this afternoon — the second time in two days.


Earlier in the day, Bhatt was taken from Ghatlodia police station to the office of the Crime Branch, prompting his wife Shweta to write to the police chiefs of Gujarat and Ahmedabad that she feared for his life because the Crime Branch “is directly under the control of the chief minister”, and has a “notorious reputation for carrying out fake encounters”.


Bhatt has alleged Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s complicity in the 2002 riots. He was arrested yesterday after Constable K D Pant alleged that Bhatt had forced him to give false testimony before the amicus curiae appointed by the Supreme Court.


The police today searched Bhatt’s home and took away the hard disk of his computer. They also added the more stringent Sec. 194 IPC to the charges under Sections 195, 189 and 342. Sec. 194, like 195, deals with fabricating evidence with intent to procure conviction, but denies bail to the accused and provides for the death penalty if an innocent person is convicted on the basis of this evidence.