The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to grant relief to former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, declining to suspend the 20-year jail sentence he is serving in a 1996 narcotics case.
A bench of Justices JK Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi said it was not inclined to entertain Bhatt’s plea, which challenged the verdict of a Gujarat trial court and sought suspension of his sentence.
Bhatt, who was the superintendent of police in Banaskantha district in 1996 and was dismissed from service in 2015, was convicted by a sessions court in Palanpur for allegedly framing Rajasthan-based lawyer Sumersingh Rajpurohit in a false drug case.
The Banaskantha police had arrested Rajpurohit in 1996, claiming they recovered drugs from a hotel room where he was staying. However, Rajasthan Police later stated that the lawyer had been falsely implicated to pressure him into transferring a disputed property located in Pali, Rajasthan.
Former police inspector I.B. Vyas approached the Gujarat High Court in 1999 seeking a thorough inquiry, which eventually led to action. Bhatt was arrested by the Gujarat CID in September 2018 under the NDPS Act and has remained lodged in Palanpur sub-jail since then.
Last year, Bhatt had moved the Supreme Court seeking transfer of the trial to another sessions court, alleging bias on the part of the presiding judge. He also sought directions for recording the trial court proceedings. The top court dismissed that plea and imposed a cost of ₹3 lakh on him for levelling allegations of bias without basis.
With Thursday’s order, Bhatt continues to serve the 20-year sentence imposed by the Palanpur sessions court for offences relating to fabricating evidence and planting drugs to frame the lawyer.
