Amitabh Thakur, the suspended Uttar Pradesh-cadre IPS officer, on Thursday said that fellow IPS Sanjiv Bhatt’s sacking by the Gujarat government was tantamount to him receiving a gallantry award.
“(Former) IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt’s dismissal is the supreme award of gallantry for whatever he (Bhatt) thought (to be) true,” Thakur and his social activist wife, Nutan, said in a statement.
“Bhatt’s adherence to his conscience even at the cost of the prices (sic) he had to pay… Makes him feel proud of being an IPS officer, at a time when he finds so many IPS officers kneeling to the ground for petty gains,” they said.
Bhatt was sacked on the grounds of ‘unauthorised absence from service’. Bhatt has claimed that the action had followed “a sham inquiry” into “completely fabricated charges”.
Bhatt had taken on Narendra Modi, when the latter was the Gujarat Chief Minister, over the handling of the 2002 riots, while Thakur has accused Mulayam Singh Yadav, the chief of the ruling Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, of trying to intimidate him.
Two days back, Thakur had defended Bhatt following Gujarat government’s notice to the latter over a video purportedly showing him with another woman and seeking explanation for having extra-marital relationships. Bhatt denied that the man in the video was him.
Thakur had said in a letter to the state home secretary that this action was an invasion of privacy.
