By RK Misra
Suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt exploded another bombshell on Tuesday with the revelation that the Gujarat Chief Minister had transferred and later kept him without posting in 2003 following his refusal to withdraw a communication containing “very important documentary evidence regarding the role of certain state functionaries/ politicians and senior police officers of Gujarat” in the killing of former minister of state for home, Haren Pandya.
In an additional affidavit filed before the High Court on Tuesday, Bhatt alleged that he had been transferred from the post of the superintendent of Sabarmati jail in November 2003 and kept without a posting for over two months after he refused to withdraw his communication despite directions from the minister of state for home Amit Shah to do so forthwith.
Bhatt had earlier last month created a sensation of sorts alleging it was Tulsiram Prajapati, a close aide of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, who had pulled the trigger on slain BJP leader Haren Pandya. According to him Asgar Ali, the key accused in the Pandya murder case, had revealed this to him in the Sabarmati Jail in 2003. Bhatt who was superintendent of police in charge of the jail at that time had reportedly informed Shah about Asgar’s claim. Haren Pandya was killed on March 26, 2003.
In the affidavit Bhatt said that in November 2003, when he was posted as the Superintendent of Police in-charge of Sabarmati Central Prison, he had come across “very important documentary evidence regarding to the role of certain highly placed state functionaries/politicians and senior police officers of the state of Gujarat in the killing of Pandya.”
“The said documentary evidence was immediately forwarded under a report to the Home Department, Government of Gujarat for further appropriate action as required by law,” Bhatt added. He further alleged that he got a phone call on the very same afternoon from the then Minister of State for Home, Amit Shah, “expressing severe displeasure about the report and documentary evidence forwarded to the Home Department” by him.
Bhatt claimed he was told to immediately withdraw and destroy the “report under which the unsavoury documentary evidence was forwarded to the Home Department.”
He however chose to put the conversation with the minister on record through a report along with the documentary evidence in a communication addressed to the minister of state for home so that the said crucial evidence was not disregarded or destroyed by interested parties.”
The affidavit states that “the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi and the then Minister of State for Home, Amit Shah were highly disturbed and agitated” by his act, whereby the evidence was “kept on record despite their instructions to the contrary”.
He alleged that he “was time and again directed to withdraw the communication” by which the evidence was placed on record.
He further alleged that “having taken an unobliging stand,” he “had refused to comply with the illegal verbal directions and was consequently transferred by the Chief Minister from the post of Superintendent of Police in-charge of Sabarmati Central Prison, in November 2003 itself, within a period of under two and a half months and was kept without any posting.”
He further added that from November 2003 onwards he was repeatedly sought to be persuaded by the Chief Minister and Shah.
“Despite strong and coercive persuasion, the petitioner as being duty bound, refused to connive in or facilitate the act of withdrawing and/or destroying the communication sent by him in his capacity as the Superintendent of Police in-charge of Sabarmati Central Prison,” Bhatt has said in his affidavit.