In the beginning there were three of them and they were the best of friends. Sanjeev Bhatt, IPS officer of the Gujarat cadre and himself a Gujarati; Additional Advocate General of the state Tushar Mehta; and Home Minister of Gujarat, Amit Shah.
Not just Bhatt and Mehta, but the two families were friends – for 22 years. They used to take holidays together, their children would spend time with each other.They also used to help each other out.
Two things happened in the interim. The 2002 Gujarat riots; and the 2003 murder of Haren Pandya, former Home Minister of Gujarat.
In 2011, Bhatt broke rank with his erstwhile friends. He said in an affidavit in the Gujarat High Court that Amit Shah, as Home Minister, colluded with the Chief Minister in murdering Pandya. He also said the Gujarat Chief Minister gave directions that officers were to ignore anti-Muslim rioters in 2002 when Gujarat riots broke out.
In 2002, he was part of the state government’s intelligence department. After the riots broke out, he says that he, along with his deputy KD Pant, were driven by driver Tarachandra Yadav to the Chief Minister’s residence, where the Chief Minister gave directions to officers that amounted to criminal negligence and worse.
Pant later denied that he had gone to the meeting. But he signed a flurry of affidavits that contradicted each other about what exactly happened that night of 27 February 2002.
Pant’s last affidavit is identical in wording to the FIR that was registered leading to Bhatt’s arrest.
Why did Bhatt wait eight years before making this information public?
Bhatt says he was in the intelligence wing and took the oath of secrecy. Moreover, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up by the Supreme Court never called him to testify. It was only in 2009, when the SIT re-investigated the case, that he was called to testify for the first time.
There’s more. In November 2003 he was Superintendent at Sabarmati Jail. There he came across important evidence that he forwarded to the Home Department relating to Haren Pandya’s death. Amit Shah called him and asked him to destroy the evidence, his affidavit said.
This affidavit too was filed eight years after the incident. Why did he wait so long?
Bhatt says he sent the information to the Home Minister’s office. This was the proper channel. They should have shared it with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and other agencies. They apparently did not.
What about his other friend, Tushar Mehta ?
In 2011, Tushar Mehta, his best friend, said in an affidavit that Bhatt had hacked into his email. Bhatt doesn’t deny they were good friends. In fact, he says in 2009, when they were going on holiday, Mehta gave him the password to his email to check hotel reservations, etc. In the course of doing so, Bhatt stumbled across highly incriminating evidence – that the Chief Minister’s Office, the Home Minister’s Office and the legal department of the state (including Mehta himself) were engaged in directing the course of investigations in several cases, including cases of accused in the Gujarat riots of 2002, cases that Mehta and his department was supposed to contest and prosecute.
What was the information Bhatt found?
Relating to the ‘staged police encounter’ of Sohrabuddin in 2005 the killing of one Tulsi Prajapati in 2006 in a ‘similarly enacted encounter’. Sohrabuddin and Tulsi Prajapati knew about the plot to kill Haren Pandya. They were killed for what they knew.
Bhatt says he found corroboration of all this in the emails exchanged between Mehta and others in the Gujarat government. So what exactly is happening here ?
One view is a police officer who ‘took on’ Narendra Modi and his government is being victimised. About the victimisation bit, there is no doubt. The home of Bhatt’s septuagenarian mother was searched by Gujarat Police after he was arrested. His wife had to petition the central government for protection. Two highly distinguished police officers, office bearers of the state’s IPS Association went to call on Bhatt’s wife to tell her they would take care of the family.
On the other hand, there are red lines that a civil servant must never cross, say Bhatt’s colleagues. He crossed those lines, they say. And now, to save himself, he is ‘taking on’ the Modi government.
The Gujarat government says that it had to pay a fine of Rs 1 lakh to one Sumer Singh Rajput on the instructions of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) because Rajput, a lawyer, said that as SP of Banaskantha, Bhatt planted more than 1 kg of narcotics in Rajput’s room in a hotel. Rajput was a tenant of a relative of a Gujarat High Court judge and was refusing to vacate the house. The Judge’s relative sought the judge’s help who sought the assistance of Bhatt. Bhatt planted the drugs and threatened Rajput with dire consequences if he did not vacate. Rajput vacated the premises but got the bar Association of Pali to which he belonged, to file a case in the NHRC, that he won.
There are other charges of professional misconduct by the Vigilance Commission of Gujarat against Bhatt. These were ignored by Home Minister Amit Shah when Bhatt was promoted.
Cases are on but the law says that an IPS officer can only be suspended for six months, after which the Government of India can intervene and even revoke his suspension. Bhatt’s suspension will have to be justified by February 2012, otherwise the centre will have the right to ask questions. Bhatt, meanwhile, will have to fight his battles in and outside courts.
