Sanjiv Bhatt's wife claims husband victim of political vindictiveness, officials counter

The wife of former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, sentenced to life imprisonment in a 1990 custodial death case, Sunday alleged her husband was a victim of political vindictiveness and there was a threat to her life, but official sources termed her charges "blatant falsehood".

Addressing a press conference here, Shweta Bhatt said her family has had a hard time since Sanjiv Bhatt was convicted in the case and it has "torn them apart".

The official sources said she was spreading "blatant falsehoods and trying to create a false impression about absence of fair trial in the case".

The case is related to the custodial deaths of Prabhudas Vaishnani, who was among 133 people caught by Jamnagar police after a communal riot broke out following a bandh call in view of BJP leader L K Advani's Rath Yatra.

Shweta Bhatt said her husband had "neither arrested nor detained anyone as he was not empowered to do so. Secondly, Prabhudas died 18 days after he was detained. He never complained of torture before the magistrate or anybody else."