New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday junked three pleas filed by sacked IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, including a plea, alleging bias against a lower court judge conducting his trial in an alleged drugs planting case. The apex court imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on each plea filed by Bhatt. A bench comprising justices Vikram Nath and Rajesh Bindal reminded senior advocate Devadatt Kamat, representing Bhatt, for filing similar pleas in the past. The bench told Kamat, “How many times have you been to the Supreme Court, at least a dozen times…..”. The apex court also referred to an earlier order passed by another bench on a similar plea filed by him.
The bench imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh each for filing three separate pleas and ordered that the amount should be deposited with the Gujarat High Court Advocates Association. Bhatt, in one of the pleas, sought transfer of the trial to another sessions court alleging bias and in the second one, he sought directions for audio-video recording of the trial court proceedings. His third petition sought adducing additional evidence in the case.
Bhatt was arrested in 2018 by the Gujarat CID in connection with the case of alleged planting of drugs to arrest a man. He had arrested one Sumer Singh Rajpurohit, an advocate, in 1996 on charges of possessing around one kg of drugs. In May this year, another bench dismissed a separate plea of Bhatt seeking a direction to submit additional evidence to support his appeal in the Gujarat High Court against his conviction in a 1990 custodial death case. He had also sought the recusal of Justice MR Shah, retired now, from hearing his plea earlier this year.
