Former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt was sentenced to life imprisonment by Jamnagar Sessions Court in Gujarat on finding him guilty in a 30-year-old custodial death case.
Sanjiv Bhatt is currently in custody in an alleged drug planting case of 1996. He was arrested last year, and his bail plea in the case had been rejected by the Supreme Court last month. He was sacked in 2015 for unauthorised absence.
The current case relates to the death of Prabhudas Madhavji Vaishnani in 1990, which took place due to alleged custodial torture. Bhatt was Additional Superintendent of Police, Jamnagar, at that time. Vaishnani and 130 others had been taken into custody during a strike, and ten days after release, he died from renal failure. He had been in custody for nine days.
A case was registered against Sanjiv Bhatt and other officers after the death. While the cognizance of the case was taken by the Magistrate in 1995, trial had been stayed by the Gujarat High Court till 2011. Later, trial had started.
The Supreme Court last week has rejected his appeal to examine additional witnesses in the case. Bhatt had alleged that though there were nearly 300 witnesses listed, only 32 had been examined during trial and important witnesses had been left out.
In 2011, Sanjiv Bhatt had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court accusing the then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, of complicity in the 2002 riots. The Court appointed SIT however cleared Modi of any involvement.
