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| Former IPS Officer Sanjiv Bhatt |
A Special Investigation Team of the Gujarat Police has arrested former
IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt through transfer warrant in a case of
conspiring to falsely implicate innocent persons in connection with the
2002 communal riots, an official said.
Bhatt is the third accused arrested in the case after social activist
Teesta Setalvad and former Director General of Police of Gujarat R B
Sreekumar. He has been lodged in Palanpur jail in Banaskantha district
since 2018 in a 27-year-old case in which he is accused of planting
narcotics to frame a Rajasthan-based lawyer. During that trial, he was
also convicted to life in a custodial death case in Jamnagar.
"We took Sanjiv Bhatt's custody from Palanpur jail on transfer warrant
and formally arrested him on Tuesday evening," Deputy Commissioner of
Police, Ahmedabad Crime Branch, Chaitanya Mandlik said later in the day.
Setalvad and Sreekumar were arrested by the crime branch last month and
they are currently behind bars. The two were arrested after the Supreme
Court upheld the clean chit given by a Special Investigation Team to the
then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the 2002 riots cases.
An FIR against the trio was registered with the crime branch under
sections 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (forgery), 194
(giving or fabricating false evidence with intent to procure conviction
of capital offence), 211 (institute criminal proceedings to cause
injury), and 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.
The trio is accused of abusing the process of law by conspiring to
fabricate evidence in an attempt to frame innocent people for an offence
punishable with capital punishment.
