Sanjiv Bhatt Gets 20 Years In Jail Day After Conviction In 1996 Drug Seizure Case

Bhatt was held 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 the Indian Police Service in 2015, was then serving as the superintendent of police of Banaskantha district.

Source : Twitter

New Delhi: A sessions court of Palanpur on Thursday sentenced former IPS Officer Sanjiv Bhatt to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 2 lakhs, in a drug seizure case dating back to 1996.

He was convicted by the court on Wednesday.

Bhatt was held 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, reported PTI.

Bhatt, who was sacked from the Indian Police 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, as per the PTI report.

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 a 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, the PTI report added.

This was the second conviction of Bhatt in a criminal matter -- the first one was in 2019 when he was found guilty in a custodial death case by a Jamnagar court.