Supreme Court dismisses Sanjiv Bhatt's plea to quash cases against him

The Supreme Court dismissed former IPS Sanjiv Bhat's plea to quash the complaints against him. The Gujarat High Court had already refused to dismiss the cases and the top court said it found no reason to interfere with the matter.

Bhatt is accused of conspiring to falsely implicate innocent individuals in connection with the 2002 communal riots. He and his colleagues were alleged to have illegally detained and custodial tortured people. The three people who filed the complaint are among the 133 people who were detained and released.

The Supreme Court bench on Monday said that it went through the order of the learned magistrate summoning the petitioner accused and the impugned judgment and order passed by the high court. Bhatt's Counsel also said if the Supreme Court upholds the High Court order, then it will set a bad precedent for the police officials.

Bhatt is charged by the Gujarat police under sections 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (to use as genuine forged documents), 194 (fabricating false evidence with intent to procure conviction of capital offence), and 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy).

His Counsel said the court should have followed judicial discipline when two complaints were quashed. "It should have quashed the third petition when the evidence remained the same. The fact of the matter is in reading the complaints and seeing if there is any dissimilarity. They are the same complaints and the question of arrest cannot be gone into."