New Delhi: Citing the prosecution’s inability to “prove the case beyond reasonable doubt”, a court in Porbandar, Gujarat, acquitted ex-IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in a 1997 custodial torture case on Saturday (December 7), as per a report by PTI.

Bhatt is currently lodged in Rajkot central jail in Gujarat after he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019 for a 1990 custodial death case, and for 20 years in jail this year for a 1996 case related to framing a lawyer in a false case.

The 1997 custodial torture case

In 2013, an FIR was filed against Bhatt and a police constable based on a complaint by Naran Jadhav, one of 22 people accused in a 1994 arms recovery case, as per LiveLaw. Jadhav accused Bhatt, who was the superintendent of police of Porbandar in 1997, of physically and mentally torturing him that year in police custody in order to extract confession from him in a Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act and Arms Act case.

According to Jadhav’s lawyers, on July 5, 1997, a police team had transferred him from Ahmedabad's Sabarmati central jail to Bhatt's house in Porbandar. Here, Jadhav alleged that he was subjected to torture through electric shocks.

Jadhav then filed a formal complaint against Bhatt in 1997 and an inquiry was ordered into the case. Based on evidence, a Gujarat court filed a case against Bhatt and the police constable in 1998; the FIR followed in 2013.

They were charged under sections 330 (causing hurt to extort confession) and 324 (causing hurt with dangerous weapons) of the Indian Penal Code. The case against the police constable was abated after his death.

However, on Saturday, additional chief judicial magistrate Mukesh Pandya acquitted Bhatt on this case as per a report by PTI.

PTI reported that the court held that the prosecution could not “prove the case beyond reasonable doubt” that the complainant – Jadhav – was forced to confess to the crime and made to surrender by being caused pain using dangerous weapons and threats.

The Porbandar court also noted that the sanction required to prosecute Bhatt, then a public servant discharging his duties, was not obtained.

How Bhatt’s old cases surfaced

In April 2011, Bhatt filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court accusing then-Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi of “complicity in the 2002 riots”, in which over 1,200 people, mostly Muslim, were killed.

Bhatt said he “had attended the meeting held by [Modi] who had asked the top police officials to let Hindus vent out their anger against the minority community following the attack on the Sabarmati Express in which 59 Hindus were torched to death near the Godhra railway station”, as per a report by The Hindu.

A special investigation team, however, later cleared Modi of playing a role in the riots. Though a plea in the Supreme Court challenged the findings of the report, the apex court dismissed it in 2022.

Bhatt was suspended from service in 2011 by the Gujarat government and then dismissed from police service by the Union home ministry over “unauthorised absence” in 2015.

He is currently serving a life term as well as a 20 year term in the Rajkot central jail for two other cases that were filed against him. One pertains to a 1990 custodial death case in Jamnagar and another is for a 1996 case related to planting drugs to frame a Rajasthan-based lawyer in Gujarat’s Palanpur.

In June 2019, a Jamnagar sessions court sentenced Bhatt, who was an additional superintendent of police in Jamnagar district in 1990, and police constable Pravinsinh Zala, to life imprisonment for custodial torture and death.

In October 1990, Bhatt had detained around 150 people after a communal riot in Jamjodhpur in Jamnagar district following a call for a ‘bandh’ by the BJP and the Vishva Hindu Parishad against the arrest and halt of BJP leader L.K. Advani's rath yatra for the construction of Ayodhya's Ram temple.

One of the detainees, Prabhudas Vaishnani, died in hospital after being released.

Though Bhatt and Zala had appealed against the Jamnagar court’s June 2019 verdict, a division bench of the Gujarat high court upheld the life sentence and murder conviction against the two this January. Bhatt has moved the Supreme Court challenging the high court's order.

In March this year, a Palanpur court also sentenced Bhatt to 20 years imprisonment in a 1996 case related to the planting of drugs to frame a Rajasthan-based lawyer.

Bhatt is also facing an FIR pertaining to the alleged fabrication of evidence in connection with the 2002 Gujarat riots cases along with activist Teesta Setalvad and former Gujarat director general of police R.B. Sreekumar.

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