The outcome of both the Gujarat government's revision petition for remand of the arrested IPS officer, Sanjiv Bhatt, and his bail application have been deferred till October 10.
The trial courts had earlier deferred the orders till Friday, but when the court assembled, principal district judge G. N. Patel said he could not complete his order and reserved his ruling till October 10.
Sessions Judge V. K. Vyas, who had earlier rejected the government's plea that the hearing on the bail application could not be taken up till the revision petition for remand was disposed of, resumed hearing on his bail plea on Friday. But the arguments remained inconclusive and the judge reserved his order till October 10.
Mr. Bhatt's advocate I. H. Sayed told the court that the two main reasons on which a bail plea was rejected were not applicable for Mr. Bhatt as being a serving government officer, there was no question of his jumping the bail, nor was there any chance of his trying to destroy documentary evidences already in the public domain.
Government advocate S. V. Raju, who had opposed the bail plea claiming that the IPS officer, being a resourceful person, could influence the key witnesses in the case, argued on technical grounds for refusing him bail. The government had filed the revision petition after the Ahmedabad Rural Court rejected the demand for seven days police remand last week and sent Mr. Bhatt to judicial custody and lodged him in the Sabarmati Central Jail, where he was the Superintendent in 2003 (soon after the 2002 communal riots in the State).
Prantij massacre case
The special trial court hearing the Prantij massacre case during the 2002 post-Godhra communal riots in which four persons, including three British nationals, were killed in Sabarkantha district , has issued summons to two former British envoys to depose before it through video conferencing on November 23.
