"Continued Judicial Harassment": Sanjiv Bhatt's Wife Writes About 'Vitiated Trial' (image: twitter.com/PragathShukla)
Shweta Sanjiv Bhatt, wife of now jailed Gujarat cadre ex-IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt expressed her distress on “vitiated trial” and “continued judicial harassment”. On Wednesday, she wrote on social media platform X: “The judiciary being subservient to this regime has colossally failed us now and again”.
Sanjiv Bhatt is known for his open and staunch criticism of Narendra Modi administration, and in 2011, he submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court against the role of then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the 2002 riots. At first suspended from the Indian Police Service in 2011, and later terminated from employment in 2015 by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs citing unapproved leave of absence.
On the eve of their wedding anniversary, his wife pen downs how the past 5.5 years, they have been subjected to “continued judicial harassment”.
Taking to Sanjiv Bhatt”s X handle, Shweta writes: “The judiciary being subservient to this regime has colossally failed us now and again …. Abusing their power and resources to frame and silence Sanjiv by any means possible so that they can exonerate and protect their political masters”.
This is Shweta Sanjiv Bhatt,
As I sit to pen this down today, on the eve of our Wedding Anniversary, I find myself suspended between juxtaposed emotions! On one hand, being washed with beautiful memories of the years spent together with Sanjiv and on the other hand being gripped…
— Sanjiv Bhatt (IPS) (@sanjivbhatt) January 31, 2024
“Dare we even hope for any semblance of justice tomorrow?,” she asks.
She, then, mentioned about 1996 drug-planting case, fabrication of evidence dated back to 1996. The case began when the Banaskantha police in Rajasthan arrested a lawyer after they found drugs in his hotel room, located in Palanpur. During this period, Sanjiv Bhatt was serving as Banaskantha’s superintendent of police. But, after the lawyer was taken into custody, the Rajasthan police said that Bhatt’s group had made up a case to harass the attorney unfairly over a property issue, The Statesman reports. Concerning the case, Sanjiv Bhatt has been taken into custody in September 2018, and has remained there ever since.
Referring the case, she wrote: “A 28 year old case, which we were once again never party to …. A trial, yet again conducted in a hostile court, which once again deprived us of our basic right to defend ourselves”.
Shweta, then added that though the case being closed by the Supreme Court in 2000, it was “maliciously and illegally tried” with the sole aim to frame Sanjiv Bhatt, whom his wife claims was never party to this case.
Sanjiv Bhatt has also been convicted to life imprisonment in connection with 1990 custodial death case occurred in Jamjodhpur town.
