Former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt gets life term for custodial death

The Jamnagar Sessions Court has sentenced former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt to life imprisonment under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code in connection with a custodial death in 1990.

Bhatt came in the spotlight for filing an affidavit in Supreme Court in 2011 against Narendra Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat for his role in the 2002 riot.

Last week the Supreme Court refused to entertain a plea of Bhatt, seeking to examine 11 additional witnesses in the 30-year-old custodial death case.

A vacation bench of justices Indira Banerjee and Ajay Rastogi



said that a three-judge bench had already passed an order on a similar plea and therefore it cannot entertain the petition.

Bhatt is an accused in the case. He was posted as the additional superintendent of police in Gujarat's Jamnagar at that time.

According to the prosecution, Bhatt had detained more than 100 people during a communal riot there and one of the detainees had died in hospital after he was released.

He was suspended in 2011 on charges of remaining absent from duty without permission and misuse of official vehicles, and later sacked in August 2015.