Supreme Court Dismisses Former IPS Officer Sanjiv Bhatt's Plea To Quash Criminal Case Against Him

The Supreme Court on Monday(September 5) dismissed an appeal filed by former IPS Sanjiv Bhatt assailing the order passed by the High Court of Gujarat by which the High Court had refused to quash a complaint filed against him.

The bench disposed of the Special Leave Petition and noted in its order that they found no reason to interfere with the matter.

"Having gone through the order of the learned magistrate summoning the petitioner accused and the impugned judgment and order passed by the high court, we see no reason to interfere with the judgment and order of High Court", the bench said.

The complaint filed against former IPS is one of the three filed by three persons who have accused Bhatt and his colleagues of illegal detention and custodial torture in a case related to unlawful assembly in 1990.  These three were among the 133 people who were detained and then were released. Summons against Sanjiv Bhatt were issued by a Magistrate in Jamnagar.

The summons issued by the Magistrate was challenged before the Gujarat High Court where two complaints were quashed but the High Court refused to quash the third complaint citing that the complainant of the first two complaints were members of the assembly but the third was not.

The Counsel appearing for Sanjiv Bhatt submitted before the Court that the Court should have followed judicial discipline when the court allowed two complaints to be quashed, it should have quashed the the third petition when the evidences remained the same. "The fact of the matter is in the reading of the complaints and see if there is any dissimilarity. They are the same complaints and the question of arrest cannot be gone into", the counsel argued.

It was submitted by the Counsel for Sanjiv Bhatt that if the order of the High Court is upheld then it would set a bad precedent for the police officials demoralizing them form performing their duties. Counsel submitted that, "State has nothing to do in the matter, the undue interest of the states has been fulfilled by keeping me in jail."

The Court after hearing all the matters decided that it was not necessary for them to interfere in the matter and orders of the High Court.

Sanjiv Bhat is serving life imprisonment after being convicted in a custodial death case.

Sanjiv Bhatt vs State of Gujarat – SLP Crl 7186/2022