Daijiworld Media Network – New Delhi
New Delhi, Dec 11: In a significant setback for former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, the Supreme Court on Thursday declined to suspend his 20-year jail sentence in a 1996 drug planting case.
A two-judge bench, comprising Justices JK Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi, stated, “We are not inclined to entertain his plea for suspension of sentence.” Bhatt had challenged last year’s Gujarat court order convicting him under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act and the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Bhatt, arrested in 2018 in connection with the case, is also serving a life sentence in another matter related to the 1990 custodial death of Prabhudas Vaishnani. During earlier hearings, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, representing Bhatt, argued that he had already spent over seven years in jail and was convicted for a non-commercial quantity of drugs. Senior Advocate Maninder Singh, representing the Gujarat government, countered that a conspiracy existed, the planted opium exceeded 1 kg, and the jail sentence should remain in force.
The NDPS case stemmed from the 1996 arrest of Rajasthan-based lawyer Sumer Singh Rajpurohit by Banaskantha Police after drugs were allegedly recovered from his hotel room in Palanpur.
Bhatt, then Deputy Superintendent of Police in Palanpur, was accused by Rajpurohit of planting the drugs to implicate him. Rajpurohit claimed the alleged planting was meant to harass him over a property dispute. He was later discharged following the trial.
With Thursday’s verdict, the Supreme Court upheld the Gujarat court’s conviction, rejecting Bhatt’s appeal to suspend his jail term.