Ex-IPS Sanjiv Bhatt acquitted in 1997 custodial torture case, but to remain in jail. Here’s why

A Gujarat court ordered Bhatt’s acquittal on 7 December in the case, saying that the case made out by the prosecution appeared to be ‘improbable’.

Former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt | File photo: ANI

New Delhi: A Gujarat court has acquitted former Indian Police Service officer Sanjiv Bhatt in a 1997 case of custodial torture, saying that the prosecution’s case appeared to be “improbable”.

A bench of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Mukesh Pandya of the Porbandar court acquitted Bhatt in its 7 December ruling, originally written in Gujarati.

The accused was serving as the Superintendent of Police (SP) in 1997, when the case was registered against him under Sections 330 (causing hurt to extort confession), 324 (causing hurt with dangerous weapons) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of a common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.

Despite the court order acquitting him of the charges in the present case, Bhatt will remain in Rajkot Central Jail due to two other convictions.

While the first pertains to his involvement in a Jamnagar custodial torture case from 1990, the other case from 1996 relates to him planting drugs to frame a Rajasthan-based lawyer in Palanpur in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district.

Nearly five years ago, in 2019, a Jamnagar District and Sessions court had found Bhatt guilty of offences like murder, and sentenced him to life imprisonment, alongside police officer Pravinsinh Zala for the 1990 custodial death of a person called Prabhudas Vaishnani.

Vaishnani had died in a hospital after he was released upon being detained with 150 others in October 1990 by then additional SP Bhatt after a communal riot had erupted in Jamjodhpur town, following a ‘bandh call’ against the halting of Bharatiya Janata Party leader L.K. Advani’s ‘rath yatra’ for construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, news agency PTI had reported.

In March, this year, Bhatt was sentenced to 20 years of life imprisonment, along with a Rs 2 lakh fine, upon being convicted by a district court in Palanpur for offences like financing illicit traffic and harbouring offenders, criminal conspiracy and using forged documents, among others.

Besides this, Bhatt has also been accused of fabrication of evidence in a case concerning the 2002 Gujarat riots, along with activist Teesta Setalvad and the former Director General of Police (DGP) of Gujarat, R.B. Sreekumar.

The 1997 case

This case against Bhatt was registered, when one of the 22 persons accused in the 1994 RDX and arms landing case—where gangster Dawood Ibrahim was named as one of the key conspirators—filed a complaint alleging that he was tortured in custody.

The gangster had allegedly sent a large quantity of RDX and arms, including AK-47 rifles, from Karachi to Gujarat’s Gosabara coast in Porbandar via sea routes in 1993, with the purported object of seeking revenge for the Babri Masjid demolition, according to PTI.

The complainant, Naran Jadav Postariya, who was accused in this 1994 case, had alleged that he was taken to Bhatt’s Porbandar house from the jail in Sabarmati, where he was stripped and subjected to torture via electrical shocks.

Subsequently, Bhatt was charged with offences like causing hurt to extort confessions and causing hurt with dangerous weapons, among others, for subjecting Postariya to physical and mental torture in police custody, and extracting confessions from him in cases against him under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) and the Arms Act.

Court’s order in the 1997 case

One of the major reasons for the court’s acquittal of Bhatt was that prior sanction had not been granted to prosecute him—a public servant on duty.

Permission or sanction is necessary before registering a complaint against a public servant. When the incident took place, the accused was doing his duty as a public servant, and according to the evidence, there is nothing that indicates that such permission or sanction was taken, the court said.

“Protection of sanction is an assurance to an honest and sincere officer to perform his duty honestly and to the best of his ability to further public duty. However, authority cannot be camouflaged to commit crime,” the court said in its 43-page judgement.

The court also said that the case made out by the prosecution appeared to be improbable and the “conviction of the appellants was not in conformity with the evidence adduced on behalf of the prosecution”.

Need for “sanction” to prosecute public servants

There are two statutes that mainly necessitate the grant of a prior sanction or permission to prosecute public officials—Prevention of Corruption Act, 2018, which aims to punish corrupt public servants, and the Criminal Code of Procedure, 1973, which lays down the procedure for criminal cases and aims to ensure that trials and investigations take place in a free, fair and transparent manner.

It is the latter that is of significance in this case. Section 197(1) of the CrPC states, “When any person who is or was a Judge or Magistrate or a public servant not removable from his officer save by or with the sanction of the Government, is accused of any offence alleged to have been committed by him while acting or purporting to act in the discharge of his official duty, no Court shall take cognizance of such offence except with the previous sanction”.

This provision also delineates the two categories of persons to whom such a law applies. The first kind relates to a person who is employed or was employed, when the alleged offence was committed, with the central government, the second type concerns employees of the state government, who were employed when the said offence was committed.

Applying these principles to the case at hand, the court said that the indispensable ingredient for prosecution in Bhatt’s case was that the offender should have done the act of “being a public servant”.

“The next ingredient close to its heels is that such public servant has acted in disobedience of any legal direction concerning the way in which he should have conducted himself as a public servant,” the court said.

Saying that even in cases where public servants exceed their duty, they will not be deprived of protection under Section 197 of the CrPC, the court said, while adding, “There cannot be a universal rule to determine whether there is reasonable nexus between the act done and official duty nor it is possible to lay down such rule.”

Bhatt was also accused under Sections 167, 219 and 166 of the IPC, which relate to a public servant framing incorrect documents with intent to cause injury, public servant in judicial proceedings corruptly making reports, etc. contrary to law, and public servant disobeying the law with intent to cause injury to anyone, respectively.

Clearing him of these charges, the court said, “For the offences under Secs. 167 and 219 of IPC, the pivotal ingredient is the same as for the offence under Sec. 166 of IPC. The remaining offences alleged in the complaint, in the light of the averments made therein, are ancillary offences to the above and all the offences are parts of the same transaction.”

(Edited by Mannat Chugh)