In a second conviction, sacked IPS Sanjiv Bhatt was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for planting drugs
Gujarat’s Banaskantha district Special Court on Thursday sentenced former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt to 20 years of imprisonment in a case of alleged drug planting dating back to 1996. Special Judge J N Thakkar sentenced the controversial police to rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs. Two lakhs for planting narcotics to arrest an advocate. This is the second conviction of Sanjiv Bhatt. He was convicted of a life sentence in 2019 for a custodial death. Bhatt’s sentence will run concurrently.
The court on Wednesday had held Bhatt guilty under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act sections 21(c), 27A (punishment for financing illicit traffic and harbouring offenders), 29 (abetment and criminal conspiracy to commit offence under NDPS Act), 58 (1) and (2) (vexatious entry, search, seizure and arrest). He has also been held guilty under Indian Penal Code sections 465 (forgery), 471 (using forged document), 167 (public servant framing an incorrect document with intent to cause injury), 204 (secrets or destroys any document), 343 (wrongful confinement), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intent).
The drug planting case was in cold storage for nearly 20 years — from 1996 to 2018 — until the Gujarat High Court in April 2018 ordered that an FIR, which accused Bhatt and others of falsely implicating the lawyer, be investigated by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) comprising officials of Gujarat CID (Criminal Investigation Department). Twenty-two years after the incident, Bhatt was arrested in September 2018 in the case.
In 1996, Bhatt was serving as the superintendent of police of Banaskantha when the district police arrested lawyer Sumer Singh Rajpurohit, a resident of Pali in Rajasthan, for allegedly keeping 1.15 kg of opium at a Palanpur hotel in 1996.
In this case, giving bail to the victim advocate, the Gujarat High Court in 1997 termed Bhatt as a cruel person in police uniform and directed that he should not be given uniformed posts. But Sanjiv Bhatt managed Congress and BJP whenever they came to power and saved his job and got all plum postings. Once he was close to then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and was his security chief. When Congress came to power in Centre in 2004, Bhatt jumped to Congress’ side and gave a false affidavit in the Supreme Court against Modi, accusing him as the mastermind of the Gujarat riots. In 2015, Bhatt was terminated from police service.
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His deeds were unworthy of any man in such high position
He fell for material gains offered by political party (Khangress)
He truly deserved much more punishment than 20 years.