Supreme Court dismisses appeal by Sanjiv Bhatt challenging Gujarat High Court refusal to quash criminal case against him

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed an appeal filed by former IPS Officer Sanjiv Bhatt challenging an order of the Gujarat High Court that had refused to quash one of three criminal complaints filed against him..A bench of Justices MR Shah and Krishna Murari after examining the orders and judgments of the magistrate as well as the High Court, held that there was no reason to interfere with the same."Having gone through order of learned magistrate summoning the petitioner accused and the impugned judgment and order passed by the high court, we see no reason to interfere with judgment and order of high court in exercise of powers under article 132 of the Indian constitution," the Court ordered.The complaints, filed by three persons, had accused Bhatt and his colleagues of torture when he had detained them in a case of unlawful assembly in 1990. Pursuant to the allegations, summons was issued to Bhatt and the others implicated alongside him by a Magistrate in Jamnagar. Bhatt challenged the same through petitions before the Gujarat High Court.The Gujarat High Court quashed two complaints but declined to quash the third one.This order was brought to the attention of a co-ordinate bench of the High Court which determined that Bhatt's and the other accused's versions of events differed from each other and from the complainant's, and therefore needed to be tested at trial.The High Court emphasised that the summons orders issued in the other two complaints specified that the complainants were members of the unlawful assembly, which was not the case in the third complaint.Counsel for Bhatt claimed before the top court that if the summoning orders of all three cases were examined, it would be apparent that all three orders are almost identical and there was no such distinction, as drawn by the High Court.It was also claimed that the order set a bad precedent and if the same was upheld, it would demoralize the police force as its officials would always be under threat of action, for the measures taken by them for an emergent situation of law and order."It is to ensure that the officers are able to function independently without any fear that the statutory protection has been provided for, even for initiation of a complaint. Therefore, the High Court erred in rejecting the petition," the plea stated.The apex court, however, found no grounds to interfere with the orders of the courts below.It, therefore, dismissed the petition while clarifying that the defence which available to the petitioner is kept open to be considered by the magistrate during trial.