Former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt convicted in ’96 drug seizure case

A SESSIONS court in Palanpur town of Banaskantha district Wednesday convicted former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in a 1996 drug planting case.

The court found Bhatt guilty of falsely implicating a Rajasthan lawyer over possession of opium and claiming that police seized drugs from a hotel room in Palanpur where the lawyer was staying. The court is expected to pronounce the quantum of punishment on Thursday.

This is the second conviction of the former IPS officer in a criminal case. In 2019, Bhatt was sentenced to life in a case of custodial death in Jamnagar, dating back to 1990. The Gujarat High Court in January upheld the conviction in the case, rejecting Bhatt’s appeal against the trial court’s decision.

The drug planting case was in cold storage for nearly 20 years — from 1996 to 2018 — until the Gujarat High Court in April 2018 ordered that an FIR, which accused Bhatt and others of falsely implicating the lawyer, be probed by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) comprising officials of Gujarat CID (Criminal Investigation Department). Twenty-two years after the incident, Bhatt was arrested in September 2018 in the case.

In 1996, Bhatt was serving as the SP of Banaskantha when the district police arrested lawyer Sumer Singh Rajpurohit, a resident of Pali in Rajasthan, for allegedly keeping 1.15 kg of opium at a Palanpur hotel in 1996.

Following the seizure, an FIR was lodged against Rajpurohit by IB Vyas, Bhatt's colleague at the time. However, Vyas later filed a report under CRPC Section 169, admitting that the person occupying the room at the hotel was not Rajpurohit. A court later discharged the Rajasthan lawyer.

In October 1996, Rajpurohit submitted a complaint before a magistrate in Rajasthan, accusing Bhatt, Vyas, other Palanpur police officers, the owner of the hotel from where the opium was seized as well as Gujarat HC judge RR Jain. He claimed that he was framed by Bhatt at the judge’s behest over a disputed property.

Sanjiv Bhatt.