A Gujarat court in Porbandar has acquitted former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in a 1997 custodial torture case. The court ruled that the prosecution failed to prove the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.
Bhatt, who was serving as the Superintendent of Police (SP) in Porbandar at the time, was accused of using torture to extract a confession from Naran Jadav, who had been arrested in a Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) and Arms Act case.
The court, led by Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Mukesh Pandya, gave Bhatt the benefit of the doubt, citing the lack of sufficient evidence to support the claims.
Bhatt had previously been sentenced to life imprisonment for a 1990 custodial death case in Jamnagar and was handed a 20-year sentence in 1996 for planting drugs to frame a Rajasthan-based lawyer in Palanpur. Currently, Bhatt remains imprisoned at the Rajkot Central Jail.
In this latest case, the court noted that there was insufficient evidence to prove that Bhatt had tortured Jadav with dangerous weapons or threats to force a confession.
The court also highlighted that the necessary sanction to prosecute Bhatt, as a public servant performing his official duties, had not been obtained. The case against Bhatt's co-accused, Constable Vajubhai Chau, was abated following Chau’s death.
The case stemmed from a complaint filed by Jadav, who claimed that Bhatt and Chau had inflicted both physical and mental torture on him while in police custody.
This alleged torture was meant to force Jadav into confessing to the charges against him. However, the court found the evidence insufficient and ultimately acquitted Bhatt.
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