The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the bail application filed by former Indian Police Service officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who is serving a life sentence for a 1990 custodial death case, Bar and Bench reported.

The bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, however, ordered that Bhatt’s appeal against his conviction and sentence pending in the Supreme Court be fast-tracked.

“The hearing of appeal shall not be affected,” the court said.

The case dates back to 1990 during Bhatt’s tenure as the additional superintendent of police in Jamnagar, Gujarat.

Bhatt is alleged to have detained more than 100 persons in connection with communal riots that broke out in Jamnagar district after the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Vishva Hindu Parishad called for a strike on October 30, 1990.

The VHP is part of a group of Hindutva organisations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the BJP.

Bhatt had moved the Supreme Court in 2011 against Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat at the time, and accused him of encouraging the 2002 communal riots in the state that left 1,000 people dead, most of them Muslims.

Bhatt claimed that he had attended a meeting at Modi’s residence on February 27, 2002, during which the former chief minister allegedly told police officers to “allow Hindus to vent their anger”.

One of the detainees in the 1990 custodial death case, Prabhudas Vaishnani, died in the hospital of renal failure after he was released. Vaishnani’s family alleged that custodial torture by Bhatt and his colleagues had led to the death. They alleged that the police had prevented the detainees from drinking water, which damaged Vaishnani’s kidneys.

The nationwide strike had been called to protest the arrest of BJP leader LK Advani, who was the party’s chief at the time. Advani had been leading a rath yatra from Gujarat’s Somnath to Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, which eventually culminated in the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

Seven police officers, including two sub-inspectors and three constables, were charged in the case, Bar and Bench reported. In 2019, a Jamnagar court found Bhatt and former police constable Pravinsingh Zala guilty, sentencing them to life in prison.

In January 2024, the Gujarat High Court rejected Bhatt’s appeal against his conviction and the life sentence. He challenged the ruling in the Supreme Court, which issued a notice to the Gujarat government in August.

During the hearing in the Supreme Court earlier, Bhatt’s lawyers, including advocate Kapil Sibal, argued that his detention for over five years and the lack of medical evidence linking him to the alleged torture made the conviction unsustainable, The Hindu reported.

Sibal also argued that Vaishnani’s death was due to existing medical issues, not police misconduct.

Besides the 1990 case, Bhatt has been accused of being involved in a 1996 drug-planting case and was acquitted in a 1997 custodial torture case in December.

Bhatt was suspended soon after he made the claims and was sacked from the police service in 2015. His department cited several reasons for his dismissal, including various counts of indiscipline, including staying absent from duty without permission and defying the orders of superior officers.

Bhatt was arrested again in July 2022 by a Special Investigation Team for allegedly committing forgery and fabricating evidence in a case related to the 2002 Gujarat riots.