Jailed former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt convicted in 1996 drug seizure case
Palanpur town of Gujarat's Banaskantha district on Wednesday convicted jailed former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in a drug seizure case dating back to 1996. The court is expected to pronounce the quantum of punishment on Thursday afternoon. 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.
Additional district and sessions judge J N Thakkar held Bhatt 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. The former police officer's wife Shweta expressed disappointment over the verdict and termed it as a «miscarriage of justice».
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.
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.
