Porbandar: A local magisterial court has formally charged controversial sacked IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in connection with an alleged incident of custodial torture from 1997.

On September 30, Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate MB Dave invoked charges under Sections 336, 330, and 34 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which pertain to causing injury with dangerous weapons, torturing individuals in custody to extract confessions, and committing crimes in furtherance of a common intention. These charges were based on a criminal complaint filed by Naran Jadav Postariya, who alleged that Bhatt, the superintendent of police in Porbandar at the time, was involved in the torture. Bhatt was brought to the Porbandar court from Rajkot jail, where he is serving a life sentence for a custodial death case in Jamnagar district.

In the charge draft, the court noted that Postariya was transported in a police vehicle from Sabarmati Central Jail to Porbandar, where he was held at the LCB office. He claimed that electric shocks were administered to his tongue, chest, mouth, and private parts to extract information about weapons. Postariya named Bhatt and another officer, Vjubhai Chaw, in his complaint. It was further alleged that the police brought Postariya’s son, Chetan, and his brother, Dhanji, to the SP office, where all three were subjected to electric shocks in succession. They were allegedly threatened with death if they pursued legal action and coerced into silence through torture.

The court noted that the case has been ongoing since 1996 and falls among the older cases that should be expedited.

Bhatt has been convicted in two other cases: he received a life sentence for a custodial death case from 1990 in Jamnagar and was sentenced to 20 years in prison for a 1996 case involving drug planting in Palanpur, Banaskantha district. DeshGujarat