Gujarat court acquits former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in custodial torture case  

A court in Gujarat's Porbandar has acquitted former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in a 1997 custodial torture case, citing that the prosecution could not "prove the case beyond reasonable doubt".

Additional chief judicial magistrate Mukesh Pandya on Saturday acquitted Bhatt, the then superintendent of police (SP) of Porbandar, in a case registered against him under the IPC sections pertaining to causing grievous hurt to obtain confession and other provisions by giving him the benefit of the doubt due to lack of evidence.

Bhatt was earlier sentenced to life imprisonment in a 1990 custodial death case in Jamnagar and 20 years in jail in a 1996 case relating to planting drugs to frame a Rajasthan-based lawyer in Palanpur. He is currently lodged in the Rajkot Central Jail.

The court held that the prosecution could not "prove the case beyond reasonable doubt" that the complainant was forced to confess to the crime and made to surrender by voluntarily causing pain using dangerous weapons and threats.

It also noted that the sanction required to prosecute the accused, who was then a public servant discharging his duty, had not been obtained in the case.

Bhatt and constable Vajubhai Chau, against whom the case was abated after his death, were charged under Sections 330 (causing hurt to extort confession) and 324 (causing hurt with dangerous weapons) of the Indian Penal Code on the complaint by one Naran Jadav for causing him physical and mental torture in police custody to extract confession in a Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) and Arms Act case.

A first information report was filed against Bhatt and Chau in a Porbandar city B-division police station on April 15, 2013, following the court's direction on Jadav's complaint before a magistrate court on July 6, 1997.