Ex-IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt lying, used false documents to implicate Narendra Modi: Nanavati Commission

Dismissed IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who had in 2011 filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court implicating the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi for alleged involvement in the post-Godhra 2002 communal violence, was lying and made up the story of his attending a meeting at the CM’s residence on February 27, according to the Nanavati commission. The commission also said that Bhatt used a false document, a fax message, to show his presence at the meeting.

“On consideration of evidence, it clearly appears that Bhatt is not telling the truth with regards to what happened at the meeting held on February 27, 2002 at the CM’s residence. Claims made by him to be present at the meeting appear to be false,” stated the second part of the report of the ‘Commission of Inquiry’ by Justice G T Nanavati and Justice Akshay Mehta.

“..Obviously, his version about what was discussed and what was stated by the CM and others in that meeting is a story now made out by him and deserves to be discarded as false,” the report stated.

Bhatt, a 1988-batch IPS officer, who was deputy commissioner intelligence in the State Intelligence Bureau (SIB) in 2002, had stated on affidavit in the SC that he had attended the February 27 meeting at the CM’s residence in Gandhinagar. He said Modi had instructed Gujarat police and the state administration to ‘refrain from resorting to strict action and to permit the majority community to vent their anger at the minority community’.

In 2015, Bhatt was dismissed from police service on grounds of ‘unauthorized absence’. He has now been in jail for more than a year, after being given a life sentence in a 1990 Jamnagar custodial death case and being denied bail in the 1996 drug planting case.

Significantly, the commission said it found that the copy of the fax message, purported to be signed and sent by Bhatt on February 27, 2002 to support his claim of attending the meeting, was actually sent on March 2, 2002 by P P Upadhyay, about an incident at Pandarva in Panchmahal.

The commission relied on statements and affidavits of senior IPS officers, namely the then Gujarat DGP K Chakravarthi, home secretary K Nityanandam, secretary to CM Anil Mukim and even Narendra Modi, to demolish Sanjiv Bhatt’s claims of attending the CM meeting.

Bhatt had claimed that he reached the CM’s residence for the meeting by accompanying the then DG and IGP K Chakravarthi in his car.

The commission stated there was no reason for Chakravarthi to direct anyone from the IB to accompany him to the meeting of only top officers of the police, home and general administration departments.

The commission said it was not believable that Chakravarthi would ask Bhatt, an officer lower in rank and not even in-charge of ‘communal’ matters to accompany him. The commission also acknowledged Chakravarthi’s affidavit stating that Bhatt had not attended the meeting and definitely did not accompany him in his car.