The wife of arrested IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who had testified against Narendra Modi in the post-Godhra riots case, has written a second letter to Union Home Minister P Chidambaram alleging that her husband was being treated like a ‘terrorist’ by the Gujarat police.
In the letter, she has also accused the state government of using all possible ways to deny bail to her husband. Shweta, wife of Bhatt, had written her first letter to Chidambaram a few days ago saying that there was danger to the life of the IPS officer from the ‘vindictive administration’.
In her second letter on Wednesday, she has said that her husband was being treated like a terrorist despite he neither being a serial offender nor a criminal. She said she has just come to know that Bhatt was kept in a dingy, filthy, stinking room in the city crime branch lock-up after he was arrested on September 30.
She further alleged that he was kept in the room with hardened criminals without food and water. Shweta has also enclosed a CD, which, according to her, contains video footage purportedly showing how Bhatt was being ‘ill-treated’.
Bhatt was arrested on the basis of an FIR filed against him by police constable K. D. Pant for allegedly threatening and forcing him to sign a false affidavit with regard to a meeting called by Chief Minister Narendra Modi on February 27, 2002, hours after the Godhra train carnage.
Expressing apprehensions about more false cases being concocted against the arrested IPS officer, his wife has once again raised the point of his safety saying, "I am terribly concerned about the life and liberty of my husband." She said looking at the treatment given to Bhatt so far, Gujarat police could go out of the way to victimise him further.
In the letter, she has also alleged that Gujarat police had used derogatory and insulting language while conducting searches at her residence after Bhatt's arrest.
In an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, Bhatt had alleged that Modi had asked the police at a meeting after the Godhra train carnage to allow the majority community to vent their anger against Muslims.