Ahmedabad, May 05: The Gujarat government has “doubled” the security cover for the senior state cadre IPS officer, Sanjiv Bhatt, by allocating another armed guard from the Ahmedabad police in addition to the one already provided.
The State Director-General of Police, Chittaranjan Singh, claimed that the additional security was provided for the benefit of Mr. Bhatt’s immediate family members. Mr. Singh had earlier maintained that under the government rules, Mr. Bhatt could be provided only one armed guard at his Ahmedabad residence as it was not the place of his posting. He was posted in Junagadh as the Principal of the State Reserve Police Training Centre. However, on Tuesday Mr. Singh said an additional armed guard was provided to ensure the safety of his family when Mr. Bhatt goes out.
Mr. Bhatt viewed the move as a “gesture to look good” before his case came up in the Supreme Court, on May 5. Mr. Bhatt had created a flutter by filling an affidavit in the Supreme Court sometime back accusing Chief Minister Narendra Modi of having “directed” the top police officers to “allow the Hindus to vent out their anger” on the eve of the 2002 communal riots which resulted in the massacre of over 1,000 Muslims in the State.
Mr. Bhatt had sought “equivalent to or more than Y-category” security cover for him and his immediate family members in view of his affidavit which, he believed, would “anger the Sangh Parivar and some other fundamental Hindu organisations” who could try to harm him and his family.
“No threat”
The decision to enhance Mr. Bhatt’s security cover comes despite Mr. Singh’s claim on Monday that his demand for “adequate security” was “unfounded” considering that he had not received any threat from any quarter during the last two years. A letter written by a senior police inspector of Ghatlodia police station in Ahmedabad, S.G. Barochia, who was sent by the police department for the “threat assessment” to Mr. Bhatt, however, clearly contradicted Mr. Singh’s claims.
Mr. Barochia’s letter to the Deputy Police Commissioner of Ahmedabad, Zone-1, dated March 30, this year, though said Mr. Bhatt had not received any threat from any quarter in the last two years, it, however, listed some half-a-dozen reasons to support his recommendation for “adequate security to Mr. Bhatt and his family as per the government rules.” The police inspector, however, did not recommend “Y-category” security, but only mentioned that the IPS officer “expects that he should be provided equivalent to or more than Y-category security considering ‘multiple threats’ to his life.”
Mr. Singh claimed that Mr. Barochia had written the letter only on the dotted lines of what was “dictated” to him by Mr. Bhatt. Mr. Barochia, when contacted said: “I have only listed the issues raised by Mr. Bhatt.” But the content of the letter written in Gujarati speak on the contrary. The issues listed in the letter to justify security cover for Mr. Bhatt and his family had been mentioned as his own threat assessment, and not what Mr. Bhatt told him. He even went to the extent to mention the murder in 2003 of the former Minister of State for Home, Haren Pandya, to draw a parallel.
–Agencies