SACKED INDIAN POLICE Service officer Sanjiv Bhatt’s house in Ahmedabad is beautiful, with a lush green courtyard and a living room adorned by artefacts. But it has fallen silent after the Jamnagar Sessions Court sentenced him to life imprisonment in a custodial death case.
The Jamnagar court found Bhatt guilty of the death of Prabhudas Madhavji Vaishnani, who was arrested along with 132 others on October 30, 1990, for rioting. The riots took place during the Bharat bandh, protesting the stopping of BJP leader L.K. Advani’s rath yatra, which was taken out to demand the building of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. Vaishnani died ten days after he was released on bail.
Bhatt’s wife, Shweta, said her husband was paying the price for filing an affidavit in the Supreme Court, implicating Narendra Modi in the 2002 Gujarat riots. Bhatt had repeated the charges before the Nanavati Commission, which investigated the riots.
“They arrested Sanjiv in a drug-planting case and expedited the custodial death case trial,” said Shweta. “They delayed the bail plea in the first case till the judgment in the other case came.” After his arrest, Bhatt had to travel regularly between Jamnagar and Palanpur, which were 425km apart.
The alleged drug-planting incident happened in 1996. According to the prosecution, Sumer Singh Rajpurohit, a Rajasthan-based lawyer, was arrested by the Gujarat Police with 1.5kg of narcotics from his hotel room in Palanpur, Gujarat. Bhatt allegedly plotted to implicate Rajpurohit to get him to vacate a property, which belonged to a relative of a judge of the Gujarat High Court.
In the Vaishnani case, the prosecution argued that the cause of death was rhabdomyolysis. It is a condition caused by injury or damage to the skeletal muscles, leading to the release of a protein called myoglobin, which can damage the kidneys. Shweta said Hyderabad-based expert Dr M. Narayana Reddy had submitted a report to the court saying Vaishnani did not die from rhabdomyolysis. Back in 1991, Dr H.L. Trivedi, a kidney expert from Ahmedabad, too, had given a similar opinion to the Gujarat police. The police had even filed a closure report, saying there was no evidence against Bhatt.
In his submission before the Jamnagar court, Bhatt said Vaishnani had never complained of pain or torture. Shweta said the defence was not allowed to present all its witnesses. “One day, around noon, the judge asked Dr Reddy to be present at 3pm. How can a person from Hyderabad come at such a short notice?” Shweta said.
Ahmedabad-based human rights activist Cedric Prakash said the judgment was biased. “The judiciary in a democracy should not only be impartial but should also be seen as impartial,” said Prakash. Former additional director-general of police R.B. Sreekumar agreed with Prakash on the impropriety of not allowing Bhatt to call the witnesses.
Special public prosecutor Tushar Gokani and government pleader Jaman Bhanderi said Bhatt was given enough time to present his witnesses. Gokani said reports by Dr Reddy and Dr Trivedi were not on record. “Dr Trivedi had not examined the deceased,” he said.
Shweta, meanwhile, has vowed to get her husband released. “The way things are, you feel that you are not able to do anything. But I think there will be someone somewhere who will see law in a manner it should be seen.”