1996 Drugs -Planting Case| Gujarat High Court Rejects Ex-IPS Officer Sanjiv Bhatt's Transfer Plea

The Gujarat High Court today rejected a plea filed by jailed former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt demanding a transfer of his trial in the 1996 drug-planting case to a court in Banaskantha district.

The HC also dismissed a connected plea challenging three orders passed by the trial court on his pleas praying that the proceedings against him should be recorded in audio and video, at his own cost.

The bench of Justice Samir J. Dave passed this order after reserving the verdict in the matter in July 14. A detailed order is awaited.

Bhatt had moved the Court with his two petitions, one for transfer of the matter to a different court in Banaskantha district and the second for challenging 3 orders passed by the trial court for being illegal and perverse.

Essentially, he had moved a transfer petition in March 2023 for the transfer of Special NDPS Case No.3/2018 in the Court of Senior-most Additional Sessions Judge as per the Administrative Office Order passed in October 2018 citing various reasons and also pointing out the conduct of the current judge conducting the trial. 

Essentially, Bhatt wanted his trial to be conducted by the senior most additional sessions judge as he had alleged bias on the part of additional sessions judge JN Thakkar, who is the third additional sessions judge in the Palanpur court.

During the pendency of his transfer plea, the trial was conducted on a day-to-day basis at the insistence of the Court and thereafter, the stage of leading evidence in defence came to be closed. The application for accommodation on account of the sickness of the advocate also came to be rejected on April 27, 2023, and the court commenced the prosecution's arguments only for 5-10 minutes allegedly just to conclude the stage and make the transfer application infructuous.

Thereafter, the request to transfer the case was rejected by sessions judge RG Devdhara through a reasoned order.

Bhatt had also sought that the trial court record proceedings be recorded in an audio-vide format, further, his lawyer also requested that the trial court to revoke one of these orders. However, on June 13, Judge Thakkar rejected all three applications with an observation that Bhatt had been making statements accusing the presiding officer and special prosecutors.

Against these orders, Bhatt had moved the HC, however, he failed to get relief in the matter.

It may be noted that Bhatt was arrested in September 2018 pursuant to a direction of the Gujarat HC to the CID to probe the case in which Sumer Singh Rajpurohit was allegedly framed by the Banaskantha police on the allegations of keeping 1.5 kg of opium at a Palanpur hotel in 1996. Bhatt is already serving life imprisonment over his conviction in a 1990 case of custodial torture.

Case Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (Guj) 141