HC rejects Sanjiv Bhatt's plea in drug planting case

The Gujarat High Court has rejected a plea filed by former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt seeking a review of its direction to the CID to probe a 1996 case of alleged drug planting in which he was arrested.

Justice J B Pardiwala rejected the jailed former officer's petition last week.

It was "nothing but one more attempt on the part of the applicant to create unnecessary hindrances and obstructions in the conduct of the trial proceedings...and thereby, thwart the due process of law", the high court held.

The order, passed on January 17, was made available on the high court's website on Wednesday.

Bhatt was awarded a life sentence by a Jamnagar court in a custodial death case in June last year.

He had also been arrested in September 2018 for allegedly falsely framing up a lawyer from Rajasthan in a drug possession case in Palanpur way back in 1996.

Bhatt was arrested in that case after the high court ordered transfer of the case to a Special Investigation Team of the CID (Crime).

He sought recall of the order on the ground that some important facts were "suppressed or deliberately not brought to the notice of the court by the state".

"There was no suppression worth the name of any material fact. I am constrained to observe that if the applicant continues to keep on thwarting the due process of law by adopting such dilatory tactics, then some stern steps may have to be taken against the applicant in accordance with law," the court said in its order.

"As on date, there is a charge-sheet on record.... The guilt or the innocence of the accused persons will be now determined by the trial court," the judge added.