SACKED GUJARAT IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt moved the Supreme Court Monday, seeking to make BJP chief Amit Shah a party to his petitions in which he has alleged that false cases were foisted on him after his disclosures on the 2002 Gujarat riots. In his fresh plea, Bhatt has also sought to implead Gurumurthy Swaminathan, co-convener of Swadeshi Jagran Manch, and bureaucrats G C Murmu and Vijay Badheka as parties, alleging their complicity in “the conspiracy to subvert the ends of justice”. [related-post] Bhatt has mentioned his 2011 affidavit in which he had referred to the emails which allegedly showed a conspiracy to shield Shah from prosecution in the alleged fake encounter cases of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Ishrat Jahan. Bhatt reportedly accessed these emails from the account of then Gujarat Additional Advocate General Tushar Mehta, now Additional Solicitor General. Mehta and Bhatt were once reported to share close ties, but later fell out. Mehta even lodged an FIR against Bhatt for hacking his mail. One more case was lodged against Bhatt on charges of wrongfully confining a witness in a riots case. Bhatt then moved the top court seeking a CBI inquiry into these the FIRs against him since he apprehended that Gujarat police would not be fair. While the Supreme Court stayed the criminal proceedings, the two petitions are still pending. On Monday, senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Indira Jaising mentioned the matter for urgent listing before CJI H L Dattu. The CJI said the case would be listed for hearing Tuesday. In his fresh plea, Bhatt cited the emails and alleged that the state administration had leaked secret documents to Shah in their attempt to screen him from prosecution in the fake encounter cases. “The correspondence between the public servants and the accused.for the purposes of helping the accused persons is an extremely grave and serious issue which goes to the root of fairness in trial,” the plea stated.
