Jailed former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt convicted in 1996 drug seizure case

A sessions court in Palanpur town of Gujarat's Banaskantha district on Wednesday convicted jailed former IPS (Indian Police Service) officer Sanjiv Bhatt in a drug seizure case dating back to 1996.

The court is expected to pronounce the quantum of punishment on Thursday afternoon. This is the second conviction of Bhatt in a criminal matter, the first one being in 2019, when he was found guilty in a custodial death case by a Jamnagar court.

Additional district and sessions judge J.N. Thakkar held Bhatt guilty of falsely implicating a Rajasthan-based lawyer by claiming that in 1996, police had seized drugs from a hotel room in Palanpur where the lawyer was staying.

Bhatt, who was sacked from service in 2015, was then serving as the superintendent of police of Banaskantha district. The district police under Bhatt had arrested Rajasthan lawyer Sumersingh Rajpurohit under relevant sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS Act) in 1996, claiming they had seized drugs from a hotel room in Palanpur where he was staying.

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

Former police inspector I.B. 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 the NDPS Act and has been in Palanpur sub-jail since then.

Last year, the former IPS officer had approached the Supreme Court seeking transfer of the trial in the 28-year-old drug 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 cost of Rs 3 lakh on him for alleging bias against a lower court judge conducting his trial in the drug planting case.

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

Bhatt's wife Shweta termed the entire drug case as "fictitious". She also expressed disappointment over the verdict and termed it a miscarriage of justice. "This verdict was a miscarriage of justice. It was a fictitious case which had been going on for the last five-and-a-half years here. My husband was nowhere involved in it. This entire case is made up and I will talk in detail about it tomorrow (Thursday) when the court pronounces the quantum of punishment," she told reporters outside the sessions court.