Gujarat Court Convicts Ex-IPS Officer Sanjiv Bhatt In 1996 Drug-Planting Case

Additional sessions judge JN Thakkar found him guilty under 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) of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act 1985.

He has also been found guilty under 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) of the Indian Penal Code 1860.

The Court is expected to pronounce its verdict on the quantum of the sentence on Thursday.

It may be noted that Bhatt was arrested in September 2018 under a direction of the Gujarat HC to the CID to probe the case in which a Rajasthan-based lawyer (Sumer Singh Rajpurohit) was framed by the Banaskantha police on the allegations of keeping 1.5 kg of opium at a Palanpur hotel in 1996. During that period, Bhatt served as the district superintendent of police, while IB Vyas, an inspector with the local crime branch in Palanpur, was also implicated as a co-accused in the case. In 2021, Vyas became an approver in the case.

It was the prosecution's case that Bhatt, along with other co-accused conspired to frame Lawyer-Rajpurohit under the NDPS Act.

Last year in August 2023, the Gujarat High Court 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.

Bhatt is already serving life imprisonment over his conviction in a 1990 case of custodial torture.