Former Gujarat IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt was arrested by the police with regards to a 1996 narcotics case in which a Rajasthan-based lawyer had been allegedly framed. Before the arrest, he had been picked up for questioning.
DGP CID (crime) Ashish Bhatia told The Indian Express that, “3-4 months back the Gujarat high court had asked the CID to investigate this case and we had formed a SIT which probed and found Sanjiv Bhatt had made out a false case against the lawyer. We have taken him for questioning. In all, we have 7 persons detained.”
Sumersingh Rajpurohit, the lawyer had filed the case against Bhatt. He was then serving as SP of Banaskantha district, and several others. Recently, 22 years after the complaint was filed, the Gujarat High Court had ordered a special investigation team (SIT) of CID to look into the case.
In the complaint, Rajpurohit had given names of Justice Jain, a former sitting judge in the Gujarat High Court, and Bhatt’s subordinate officers. He had alleged that he had been abducted and incriminated in a false NDPS (Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances) case.
He claimed this had been done to force his family to vacate a rented residence which was owned by Justice Jain’s sister in Pali. He had been arrested after Banaskantha police reportedly found over one kilo of opium at a hotel in Palanpur, Gujarat.
The lawyer claimed that e never occupied the hotel room and that he was in Pali at the time of the purported police raid. He also alleged that he was abducted and brought to Palanpur in Banaskantha and pressurized by Bhatt and his subordinate police officers to vacate the said rented premises by threatening him with arrest under the NDPS Act.
He claimed that he had to vacate the property under pressure from police.
After he was issued a show cause notice by the Gujarat Home department in connection with an alleged sex video, Bhatt was dismissed from service in 2015. He had also been suspended from service in 2011 after submitting an affidavit in the Supreme Court of India accusing then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi of ‘complicity in 2002 riots’.
