A day after the Supreme Court upheld the all clear given by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2002 riots cases, the Gujarat police on Saturday arrested former Director General of Police R B Sreekumar and took in custody social activist Teesta Setalvad for allegedly conspiring to falsely implicate innocent persons.
The First Information Report (FIR), based on a complaint filed by an Ahmedabad crime branch official, also named former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who is already in jail in another case.
Teesta Setalvad, who was picked up from her Mumbai residence, claimed her arrest was illegal and apprehended threat to her life.
She will be arrested once she is brought to Ahmedabad, police sources said.
Sanjiv Bhatt is sentenced to life imprisonment in a custodial death case, and in another case he is accused of planting contraband to frame a lawyer in a false case.
Teesta Setalvad was detained from her house in the Juhu area of Mumbai and later taken to Santacruz police station for informing the local police about her detention, sources said.
“She has been taken by the Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad….we were not informed in advance about the case. They barged into the house and assaulted her before taking her with them,” alleged her lawyer Vijay Hiremath.
But a local police official denied that Teesta Setalvad was assaulted.
Teesta Setalvad, Sanjiv Bhatt and R B Sreekumar “conspired to abuse the process of law by fabricating false evidence to make several persons to be convicted in an offence that is punishable with capital punishment,” said the complaint filed by inspector D B Barad of Ahmedabad crime branch.
They instituted “false and malicious criminal proceedings against innocent people with intention to cause injury to several persons, and prepared false records and dishonestly used those records as genuine with the intention to cause damage and injury to many persons,” as per the complaint.
With inputs from NDTV
The post Gujarat ex top cop, activist held within a day of SC verdict first appeared on IPA Newspack.
