Ahmedabad: Suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt on Saturday requested Justice (retd) GT Nanavati Commission, probing the 2002 communal riots, to take on record his two affidavits alleging complicity of Gujarat government which he had filed before the National Commission for Minorities (NCM).
He also requested the panel to direct the state government to furnish Intelligence records of 2002.
In his affidavits submitted to NCM in 2012, Bhatt had alleged that Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) and the Nanavati panel had turned a blind eye towards involvement of the then Gujarat government in riots.
The SIT was set up on a complaint filed by Zakia Jafri, whose husband and former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was killed besides 68 other members of Gulberg Housing Society, in the communal riots.
"It is requested that my affidavits dated April 25, 2012 and May 29, 2012 filed before the National Commission for Minorities in New Delhi, may be taken on record and treated as my affidavits before this commission," Bhatt said in an affidavit filed before the Nanavati Commission today.
The SIT in its report filed before the Supreme Court had discarded Bhatt's claims of attending a secret meeting on February 27, 2002 wherein he claimed that then chief minister Narendra Modi asked the police to go soft on rioters.
In its closure report before a Gujarat court, the SIT had said that Bhatt submitted forged documents to prove his claim and levelled allegations only to malign the image of the Gujarat government.
In his affidavits filed before NCM, Bhatt had also demanded relevant records from Intelligence Bureau (IB) to file a detailed affidavit to support his allegations against the state government.
Bhatt has also requested Nanavati Commission to direct the state government to provide him with the intelligence records of 2002.
"It is indeed very disheartening that this Commission, despite being persuaded at the length during the course of the hearings before it, about the dubious conduct of the State of Gujarat, is apparently not interested in directing the State to produce the documents (intelligence records) as undertaken by the State itself before the High Court," Bhatt said in his affidavit today.
"The State of Gujarat, whose conduct is under inquiry by
this Commission, continues to enjoy unconcealed indulgence of this Commission and has, under one fatuous pretext or the other, avoided providing the records and documents as ordained by the High Court of Gujarat despite the passage of more than 24 months," he said in the affidavit.
The High Court, in October 2012 and on June 16 this year, had directed the Nanavati panel to allow Bhatt to inspect around 38 riot-related documents, irrespective of whether they are classified or not.
Bhatt shot into limelight when he filed an affidavit before the apex court in 2009 alleging that the state government, then headed by Narendra Modi, had allowed rioters to vent out their anger. However, the SC did not take Bhatt's affidavit on record following the SIT report.
More than 1000 people, most of them from minority community, were killed in riots in the aftermath of the Godhra train burning incident in February 2002.
