The Supreme Court while rejecting Bhatt’s plea, said that the former IPS officer tried to influence amicus curiae, the three-member SC bench, used media card and took the help of pressure groups to malign others. The apex court further said that Bhatt got paid by rival political party to spearhead his smear campaign.
A two-judge bench comprising of Chief Justice HL Dattu and Justice Arun Mishra, questioned the role of media, political parties as well as the NGOs and social activists for pushing Sanjiv Bhatt’s case. “It was an attempt by Bhatt to influence this court through politics and activism,” observed the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court rejected Sanjiv Bhatt’s request for a court-monitored SIT probe into the allegations against him that he forced his subordinate to file an affidavit in 2002 riots case and hacked the email account of a law officer.
Bhatt had also sought impleadment of BJP president Amit Shah, then MoS Home in Gujarat and RSS functionary S Gurumurthy as parties in his petition, which was rejected too. While Bhatt had launched a tirade against PM Modi and Gujarat Government, his wife contested against Narendra Modi in 2012 assembly polls on a Congress ticket.