A court in Gujarat's Porbandar has acquitted former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Sanjiv Bhatt in a 1997 custodial torture case. .Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) Mukesh Pandya acquitted Bhatt after noting that the prosecution failed to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt. "It is ordered that the accused person is hereby acquitted for offences under Sections 326, 330, 34 IPC (Indian Penal Code) for lack of evidence under the provision of Section 248 (1) of CrPC (Code of Criminal Procedure). Since the accused is in jail, no orders granting bail till further appeal are being passed", the Court stated in its order. .Bhatt, was accused of having committed offences under Sections 326 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means), 330 (voluntarily causing hurt to extort confession, or to compel restoration of property) and 34 (Acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), while he served as a Superintendent of Police (SP) in Gujarat at the time.The Court however, noted that the prosecution was not able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the complainant in the case was coerced into confessing to the crime and was forced to surrender by way of threats and the use of dangerous weapons.It further observed that the required sanction to prosecute Bhatt, who was a public servant performing official duties at the time, had not been obtained..The former Gujarat-cadre officer was in 2019 convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in a separate 1990 case involving custodial death. A Sessions court in Jamnagar had found him guilty of causing the death of a detainee who, along with hundreds of others, had been held in police custody during the communal riots of 1989.Bhatt is currently also serving a 20-year sentence in another case pertaining to planting drugs after a sessions court in the Banaskantha district of Gujarat convicted him under various provisions of the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act and the Indian Penal Code (IPC).In the present case, however, involving his alleged involvement in a 1997 custodial torture case, a court in Porbandar has acquitted him..[Read Order]
