"Genuinely Inspiring": David Shoebridge On Meeting With Sanjiv Bhatt's Daughter Aakashi Bhatt (image@ DavidShoebridge)
David Shoe Bridge, an Australian Senator shared picture with Aakashi Bhatt, daughter of former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who “has been imprisoned for life for telling the truth about the role of Indian PM Narendra Modi in the dreadful 2002 Gujurat riots”.
By sharing the Australian Senator’s X (formerly twitter) post, Shweta Sanjiv Bhatt, Aakashi’s mother said on Sanjiv Bhatt’s X handle that, the meeting between her daughter and Shoebridge was to “discuss the arbitrary incarceration of her father @sanjivbhatt for having the courage to speak truth to power! Concerns were raised regarding the dangerous antidemocratic trends in India, the ongoing systematic assault on human rights defenders and the erosion of the rule of law”.
She said the fight fir justice to Sanjeev Bhatt will continue.
This is Shweta Sanjiv Bhatt,
Australian Senator @DavidShoebridge met with @aakashibhatt to discuss the arbitrary incarceration of her father @sanjivbhatt for having the courage to speak truth to power! Concerns were raised regarding the dangerous antidemocratic trends in India,… https://t.co/PFNRcEL4WZ
— Sanjiv Bhatt (IPS) (@sanjivbhatt) January 24, 2024
On last October, the Supreme Court has dismissed three petitions from Sanjiv Bhatt alleging bias on the part of trail hearing a case in which he is accused of planting drugs to falsely implicate a Rajasthan-based lawyer. The bench imposed a fine of Rs 3 lakh- one lakh for each petition filed.
Shweta Bhatt said that the fine was imposed on them for approaching the court “many times”. She then added that she never knew that pursuing justice is a criminal offence in Modi’s India. “Little did I know that there was a limit to the number of times one can approach a forum to seek justice”, she said.
Sanjiv Bhatt has been convicted to life imprisonment in a case of custodial death and is facing a trail on charges of planting drugs on a Rajasthan lawyer. He was dismissed from service for absenteeism.
David Shoebridge has voiced his concerns over the issues of unrest in India and has criticised the BJP government before. When BBC released a documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in the 2002 Gujarat riot, Shoebridge said that “in India, telling the truth can be a crime. This film is a small tase of what people in India have been experiencing with the administration there”.
Responding to the Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s claim of involvement of Indian diplomats in the death of Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Najjar, Shoebridge said that it is a disturbing trend of extreme political violence, and “it shows how far to the extreme the BJP government has lurched”. He asked if India is plotting to kill their political opponents in Canada and US, “just imagine what’s happening in India itself”.
This is a disturbing trend and it shows how far to the extreme the BJP government has lurched. If the Indian Government is plotting to kill political opponents in the US and Canada just imagine what’s happening in India itself.
— David Shoebridge (@DavidShoebridge) November 29, 2023
