Sanjiv Bhatt is manipulator, not a witness in Gujarat riots case: SIT

Ahmedabad: Supreme Court-appointed SIT, probing the 2002 Gujarat riots, today claimed suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt was not a “witness” in the complaint against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, but a “manipulator”. “Sanjiv Bhatt was never a witness to any meeting held by Chief Minister, but he is fabricating everything…(he) is manipulating and has conspired to play media card in building pressure groups to influence not only amicus curae (in Zakia Jafri’s petition) Raju Ramchandran, but even the Supreme Court,” SIT lawyer R S Jamuar said.

Jamuar was arguing before Metropolitan Magistrate B J Ganatra, who is hearing a protest petition by Jafri challenging the closure report of SIT giving clean chit to Modi and others with respect to the riots. Today, on the sixth day of his arguments, Jamuar submitted evidence to back up the Special Investigation Team’s contention in the closure report that Bhatt was not a reliable witness. Coming down heavily on Bhatt, Jamuar cited contents of some of the emails collected by the state government during the investigation of a criminal complaint against Bhatt. These emails included the ones allegedly sent by Bhatt to Nasir Chhipa, journalist Subhranshu, activist Teesta Setalvad, the then Leader of Opposition in Gujarat Assembly and Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil and IPS officer Rahul Sharma (who had collected details of phone calls made during the 2002 riots). “Sanjiv Bhatt, on whom complainant (Jafri) has placed much reliance and who had started making controversial claims after gap of nine years after the riots, has tried to manipulate even media and conspired to build pressure on even the Supreme Court judges who were hearing SLP filed by Zakia Jafri,” the SIT lawyer said.

Referring to the observations of senior advocate Raju Ramchandran, appointed by the apex court as an amicus curae, Jamuar said, “Even Raju Ramchandran has observed that Bhatt is actively strategising and his conduct is not of a detached police officer.”

Bhatt had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court claiming that he was present at the meeting held by Modi on the night of Godhra train burning incident of February 27, 2002, where Modi allegedly instructed top police officials not to take action against rioters.

PTI