Ahmedabad:The Gujarat High Court has issued an order to complete the trial of a 25-year-old case against former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt within nine months.
Sanjiv Bhatt has been an undertrial prisoner in an NDPS (Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic) case in which the former cop is accused of fraudulently planting drugs in a Rajasthan lawyer's room at a hotel in Palanpur in 1996.
Meanwhile, the court has allowed Bhatt's demand to receive copies of FIR papers against him.
Sanjiv Bhatt was arrested on September 5, 2018 and charges were framed against him in 2019. He has been in prison ever since his arrest in 2018.
He is currently facing cases under Sections 465 and 471 of the IPC under the NDPS Act. Bhatt, a Gujarat cadre IPS officer, who was Banaskantha SP in 1996, was sacked by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs in August 2015 for 'unauthorized absence' from service.
It is alleged by the prosecution that when the applicant was posted as District Superintendent of Police, Banaskantha at Palanpur, he hatched a conspiracy to frame one Sumer Singh Rajpurohit, resident of Pali, Rajasthan State, in a false case of opium possession, punishable under the provisions of the NDPS Act.
Banaskantha Police under Bhatt had claimed that 1.5 kg of opium was found in a hotel room occupied by Rajpurohit in Palanpur town. However, a probe by the Rajasthan police had revealed that Rajpurohit was falsely implicated.
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The trial court in Palanpur had framed charges against Bhatt in September 2019. He is now facing trial under relevant sections of the NDPS act and under 120(b), which deals with criminal conspiracy, and sections 465 and 471 of the IPC for forgery. He is also accused under various other sections of IPC, such as 117, 167, 204, and 343. His discharge plea was earlier rejected by the trial court and the high court had also dismissed his plea challenging that rejection last year.
In a revision application filed by Bhatt in March this year, he claimed that since the opium seized at that time was in 'natural' form and not a 'manufactured drug or derived from opium', he cannot be charged under section 17,18 or 21 of the NDPS Act, because it's a 'defective charge'.
Since section 27(a) of the NDPS Act, which is also slapped on him, deals with 'financing' drug-related activities, the charge is also defective and 'needs to be altered' because it does not apply in this case, Bhatt said in his plea.
It was alleged that in the name of Rajpurohit, a forced entry was made in the hotel register by Bhatt. In his plea, the former IPS officer contended that the question of framing charges under section 465 and 471 of the IPC does not arise because the prosecution 'was silent about who created a false entry in the name of the witness Sumer Singh in Hotel Lajvanti'.
However, Justice Ilesh Vora, while dismissing Bhatt's plea, noted that 'this court does not find any infirmity either legally or factually in the impugned order passed by the lower court, which does not call for any interference'.
Sanjiv's family cries foul
Shweta Sanjiv Bhatt has levelled allegations that the case for which Sanjiv Bhatt has been convicted took a u-turn after the officer filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court in 2011 against Narendra Modi in the 2002 Gujarat riots case, a charge rejected by the courts. She had also said the government is hunting down Sanjiv Bhatt for submitting evidence against Modi.
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