Ahmedabad:The Gujarat riot probe story got murkier with a top legal official of the state and IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt getting into an ugly spat over leaking of sensitive information concerning the riots.
Additional advocate general of Gujarat Tushar Mehta has accused his former buddy and IPS officer Bhatt of hacking into his email account and sharing his password with two television journalists.
The fact that their friendship had probably ended was clear when Bhatt filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court earlier this week annexing certain emails from Mehta’s account to say that there was a mole in the special investigating team probing the riots who was leaking information to the Modi government.
On Friday, Mehta filed a complaint against Bhatt in the Vastrapur police station, accusing him of hacking his email. Bhatt was booked under the IT Act 2000 after Mehta gave an application to deputy commissioner of police (zone 1) saying that he was tipped off about this by joint director of state civil defence who sent him a letter saying that some emails accidentally popped up on his computer when he was using the official email, which referred to Mehta’s email account. Sanjiv Bhatt was on this civil defence post before he was transferred to Junagadh.
The civil defence official told Mehta that he had noticed some emails to two national television journalists from Bhatt’s gmail id. “This email communication shared by him with mediapersons also contained the facts which indisputably disclosed that Sanjiv Bhatt has asked the mediapersons not to change password of my mail account and go through my mailbox,” says Mehta’s application to the police.
Mehta told police, “The mails are not only unauthorizedly seen by Bhatt but are also shared by him with others for ulterior motive, which, apart from being criminal offences, grossly violates my right of privacy.” Mehta suspects that Bhatt might have hard and soft copies of the mails which he might use to tarnish his reputation. M R Sharma, inspector of Vastrapur police station, confirmed that the police station has received a complaint against Bhatt. “Investigation in the case will start soon,” said Sharma.
Bhatt and Mehta were childhood friends, but seem to have fallen out with each other. Bhatt has filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court that he had chanced upon two unusual emails from the special investigation team probing the Godhra riots, in Mehta’s personal mail account.
Bhatt explains in the affidavit that he was required to access Mehta’s email account from September 2009, for personal reasons, and it was then that he had noticed that someone from the SIT was leaking very sensitive and confidential details on the ongoing investigations.
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