A Palanpur court in Banaskantha district on Friday rejected the bail plea of former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in connection with an alleged drug planting case dating back to 1996. Bhatt is presently behind bars for allegedly framing a Rajasthan-based lawyer Sumer Singh Rajpurohit in the narcotics case 22 years ago and had moved the court seeking bail contending that the investigation in the case after over two decades was an abuse of law.
The former IPS had contended before the court that he must be granted bail as there was a delay in the investigation of the case. He also submitted that he had been already interrogated in the case and has deep roots in the society with movable and immovable properties. Therefore, he is not likely to abscond or tamper with the evidence and jump the bail. He also argued before the court that he has no criminal antecedants and there is no legal evidence against him.
On the contrary, the CID vehemently opposed Bhatt's bail plea terming him as the "mastermind" of the offence. The probe agency also claimed that Rajpurohit was framed at the behest of Bhatt. Rajpurohit had also opposed Bhatt's bail plea and filed an affidavit in this regard. Interestingly, the CID in its affidavit had claimed that the former IPS had allegedly informed some police personnel a day in advance about the narcotics consignment and Rajpurohit neither booked any room nor he stayed in that hotel.
The state CID-crime had arrested Bhatt from his house in Ahmedabad on September 5 in connection with this case where he allegedly planted drugs in a hotel room in Palanpur to frame Rajpurohit to pressurise his relatives to vacate a property owned by a judge's sister. The arrest was made after the Gujarat High Court in June directed the CID to probe the case in which Rajpurohit was booked for allegedly keeping 1.15 kg opium at a Palanpur hotel room in 1996. Bhatt was then SP of Banaskantha.
