A Gujarat court docket on Wednesday convicted former Indian Police Service officer Sanjiv Bhatt in a 1996 drug seizure case, PTI reported.
The case pertains to a grievance by a Rajasthan-based lawyer, Sumer Singh Rajpurohit, accusing Bhatt amongst others, of planting 1.15 kg of opium at a Palanpur resort the place he was staying. This got here after Rajpurohit was arrested and booked underneath the Narcotic Medication and Psychotropic Substances Act after the police discovered medication in his resort room.
Bhatt was the district superintendent of police on the time.
The court docket on Wednesday discovered him responsible underneath sections of the Narcotic Medication and Psychotropic Substances Act. The prosecution has sought the utmost punishment of 20 years for Bhatt.
The court docket reserved its order on the quantum of sentence, which is more likely to be pronounced on Friday, PTI reported.
In February 2023, the Supreme Courtroom imposed a superb of Rs 10,000 on Bhatt for difficult a Gujarat Excessive Courtroom order that directed a trial within the drug seizure case towards him to be accomplished by March 31, 2023.
The Excessive Courtroom in 2018 had directed the Crime Investigation Division of the Gujarat Police to take over the case after it was closed in 2000, PTI reported. Bhatt was arrested in 2018 and has been in jail since.
In January, the Gujarat Excessive Courtroom upheld the life sentence given to Bhatt by a Jamnagar periods court docket in 2019 in a 1990 custodial torture case.
The custodial torture case dates again to Bhatt’s tenure as the extra superintendent of police in Jamnagar. A former police constable, Pravinsingh Zala, was additionally convicted within the matter and handed a life time period. Each events had appealed towards the Jamnagar court docket’s verdict discovering them responsible of homicide.