Posted by Palanpur: A Gujarat sessions court in Banaskantha district’s Palanpur town on Thursday sentenced jailed former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Sanjiv Bhatt to 20 years of imprisonment in a 1996 case involving planting of drugs to frame a Rajasthan-based lawyer.
Gujarat court on Wednesday convicted Bhatt for falsely implicating a lawyer
Additional district and sessions judge JN Thakkar on Wednesday held Bhatt, who is currently in jail in a custodial death case, guilty of falsely implicating a Rajasthan-based lawyer for claiming that police had seized drugs in 1996 from a hotel room in Palanpur where the said lawyer was staying.
Bhatt was superintendent of police of Banaskantha district in 1996
The Banaskantha district police under Bhatt, who was superintendent of police of Banaskantha district in 1996, had arrested Rajasthan-based lawyer Sumersingh Rajpurohit under relevant sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS Act) in 1996, claiming that they had seized drugs from a hotel room Palanpur where Rajpurohit was staying.
The Rajasthan police, however, later said that lawyer Rajpurohit was falsely implicated by the Banaskantha police in the case to compel Rajpurohit to transfer a disputed property located at Pali in Rajasthan.
Former police inspector IB Vyas had moved the Gujarat High Court in 1999 seeking a thorough probe into the matter. The Gujarat CID arrested Bhatt, who was sacked from the police force in 2015, in September 2018 in the drug case under the NDPS Act.
Supreme Court dismissed Bhatt’s plea for transfer of trial to another sessions court
Bhatt had also moved the Supreme Court last year alleging bias and sought transfer of the trial in the 1996 drug case to another sessions court and directions from the top court for recording of the trial court proceedings.
The Supreme Court, however, dismissed Bhatt’s plea for repeatedly approaching the top court alleging bias against a lower court judge conducting his trial in the drug planting case and imposed a cost of Rs 3 lakh on him.
Bhatt was earlier convicted in a custodial death case
Earlier, a Jamnagar Court convicted Bhatt in a custodial 1990 death case in 2019 and sentenced him to life imprisonment and this is the second conviction for Bhatt in a criminal matter.