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Sanjiv Bhatt filed affidavit accusing Modi of complicity in 2002 riots

The services of Gujarat’s suspended officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who had taken on the then Narendra Modi administration on the 2002 riots, has been terminated from the Indian Police Service (IPS) by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Government of India.

“I have received the message that I have been terminated from the service,” Mr. Bhatt told The Hindu. Asked whether he would challenge the termination, he said, “I will think about it. I just received the message some time back.”

In April 2011, Mr. Bhatt filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court accusing Mr. Modi of “complicity in the 2002 riots” in which over 1,200 people, mostly from the minority community, were massacred.

The 1988 batch IPS officer of Gujarat cadre, Mr. Bhatt was suspended by the Gujarat government after he filed an explosive affidavit in the Supreme Court contending that he “had attended the meeting held by the then Chief Minister of Gujarat Mr. Modi who had asked the top police officials to let Hindus vent out their anger against the minority community following the attack on the Sabarmati Express in which 59 Hindus were torched to death near the Godhra railway station.”

Following his affidavit in the apex court, which was monitoring the probe by the Special Investigation Team headed by the former CBI director R.K. Raghavan, looking into the cases of 2002 riots as also the role of Mr. Modi, the State government had suspended him and he was also briefly arrested by the State police.

The State authorities had implicated Mr. Bhatt in several cases and a detailed dossier was compiled and sent to the MHA seeking his dismissal from the service.

Mr. Bhatt, an IIT alumnus who had a chequered track record in the Gujarat police, had also taken on the SIT, accusing it of “shielding Mr. Modi and top ranking police officials of Gujarat.”

Only last week, the Gujarat Home department issued him a show-cause notice regarding a sex CD in which a person caught in the compromising position resembled Mr. Bhatt.