Top Court adjourns hearing on plea by IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt for 6 weeks

The Apex court on Wednesday (January 27) adjourned the hearing for six weeks on a plea filed by former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt. The ex-cop had filed a plea seeking suspension of his life imprisonment jail sentence in connection with a 1990 custodial death case.

A three-judge bench of the Top Court, headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan and also comprising Justice M R Shah and Justice R Subhash Reddy said, “Till the petitioner’s (Sanjiv Bhatt) review petition against a 2019 order by the SC is decided, we adjourn the matter for six weeks,”.

Mr. Sibal suggested that it is better for the court to first consider the pending review plea against the June 2019 order which dismissed the ex-IPS officer’s plea to examine additional witnesses in the trial. He added that this was a case of “mistrial” and “travesty of justice”.

The senior lawyer said, “I am saying that this is a case of complete mistrial because my witnesses have not been called. How 23 witnesses have been examined? I am not on merits at all. I am telling you the procedure adopted. It is binding on every court. Out of 300 witnesses, they called only 37.”

Bhatt was sentenced to life-imprisonment by a Sessions Court in Jamnagar in June 2019 for his involvement in the alleged custodial death of one Prabhudas Vaishnani in November 1990. The former IPS officer, who had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court in 2011 accusing the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi of complicity in the 2002 riots, is currently at Palanpur jail.

In October 2019, the Gujarat High Court had refused to suspend his sentence observing that he had no respect for Courts and had deliberately tried to mislead them and the instant special leave petition filed by him is to challenge this High Court order.