After a brief hearing on Thursday, the Supreme Court gave the former Gujarat police official the thumbs down, refusing to give him relief
NEW DELHI — The problems for Sanjiv Bhatt, the jailed former police officer who served in the Indian Police Service (IPS), just keep piling up.
After a brief hearing on Thursday, the Supreme Court gave him the thumbs down, refusing to entertain his plea to suspend his 20-year prison sentence for a 1996 opium planting case.
A bench comprising Justices J K Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi categorically stated it was “not inclined” to interfere in the matter.
Bhatt was convicted in March 2024 for his role in falsely implicating Rajasthan-based advocate Sumersingh Rajpurohit in a narcotics case. The case goes back to when Bhatt was SP in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district. The Gujarat CID arrested Bhatt in 2018, and he’s been in Palanpur sub-jail since then.
Advocate Rajpurohit was later released on bail, and an inquiry by Rajasthan Police concluded that the Banaskantha police had falsely implicated the lawyer to pressurise him into relinquishing a disputed property in Pali, Rajasthan.
The scandal surfaced publicly when then police inspector I B Vyas approached the Gujarat High Court in 1999 demanding a probe. After years of investigation, the Gujarat CID arrested Bhatt in September 2018 under the stringent Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.
A sessions court in Palanpur convicted him in March 2024 and sentenced him to 20 years’ imprisonment. Bhatt has remained lodged in Palanpur sub-jail since his arrest.
In 2024, Bhatt had moved the Supreme Court seeking transfer of the trial outside Gujarat, alleging bias by the trial judge and requesting video recording of proceedings.
The apex court dismissed that petition and imposed costs of ₹3 lakh on him for making unsubstantiated allegations against the lower court judge.
Sanjiv Bhatt is widely believed to have been targeted only because he had claimed to be an eyewitness to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s complicity in the mass violence against Muslims during the Gujarat pogrom of 2002. The horrific violence, perpetrated by Hindu forces owing allegiance to the supremacist ideology of Hindutva, claimed the lives of over 2,000 people many of whom were raped and burnt alive. It led to the US Department of State revoking Modi’s US visa under the International Religious Freedom Act.
With the Supreme Court declining to suspend the sentence, Bhatt will continue to serve his term unless his main appeal against conviction succeeds.
