Gujarat: Ex-IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt gets 20-year jail in drug-planting case

A Gujarat court has sentenced former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt to 20 years in jail in a 1996 case involving planting of drugs to frame a lawyer.

Bhatt, who has been in jail since 2018, has already been sentenced to a life term in a 1990 custodial death case in Jamnagar. The sessions court has clarified that Bhatt has to serve the 20-year sentence consecutively, which means it will start after the end of the life sentence in the custodial death case.

What was the case?

The drug-planting case is from a time when Bhatt was the superintendent of police in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district. The district and sessions court in Palanpur, Banaskantha, on Thursday (March 28) held him guilty of falsely implicating a Rajasthan-based lawyer in 1996 by claiming that police had seized drugs from a hotel room in Palanpur where the lawyer was staying.

Additional District and Sessions Judge JN Thakkar convicted Bhatt on Wednesday under relevant sections of the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act and Indian Penal Code. The quantum of punishment was announced on Thursday.

Bhatt was also fined Rs 2 lakh and he will have to spend an additional year in jail if he fails to pay it, the judge said in his order.

Held guilty

The former police officer, who was sacked from the force in 2015, was held guilty under Section 167 (public servant framing an incorrect document with intent to cause injury), 465 (forgery), and 120b (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.

He was also pronounced guilty under various sections of NDPS Act, including Section 21 (possession of drugs), 27A (financing illicit traffic and harbouring offenders), and 58-2 (wilfully and maliciously giving false information to arrest someone or conduct search).

Bhatt’s lawyer SB Thakor told reporters his client will challenge the verdict in the High Court. “The court only presumed that opium was purchased and planted (by Bhatt). Otherwise, there was no concrete evidence to prove that charge,” Thakor said.

What happened in 1996

The district police led by Bhatt had arrested Rajasthan lawyer Sumersingh Rajpurohit under the NDPS Act after claiming drugs (opium) was seized from the hotel room in Palanpur in which the latter was staying.

However, Rajasthan police later said Rajpurohit was falsely implicated by the Banaskantha police to compel him to transfer a disputed property located in Pali in the neighbouring state.

Former police inspector IB Vyas had moved the Gujarat High Court in 1999 demanding a thorough inquiry into the case.

Bhatt was arrested by the state CID in September 2018 in the drug case under NDPS Act and has been in Palanpur sub-jail since then.

No relief from SC

Last year, Bhatt had approached the Supreme Court seeking transfer of the trial in the drug-planting case to another sessions court alleging bias. He had also sought directions for recording of the trial court proceedings.

However, the Supreme Court had dismissed Bhatt’s plea and imposed a fine of Rs 3 lakh on him for alleging bias against a lower court judge conducting trial in the drug-planting case.

Life term

During the pendency of the trial in the drug-planting case, a sessions court in Jamnagar, in 2019, convicted Bhatt of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment in a 1990 custodial death case. The custodial death took place when Bhatt was additional superintendent of police in Jamnagar district.

The Gujarat High Court in January this year rejected Bhatt’s appeal against the trial court’s order and upheld his conviction in the case.

(With agency inputs)