Former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt sentenced to life imprisonment

NEW DELHI: Jamnagar Sessions Court on Thursday sentenced former IPS officer Sanjeev Bhatt to life imprisonment in a 30-year-old custodial death case.

The sentence was handed out under IPC Section 302.

The Supreme Court, last week rejected a plea of sacked IPS officer seeking to examine 11 additional witnesses in a 1990 custodial death case.

A vacation bench of the apex court, headed by Justice Indira Banerjee and also comprising Justice Ajay Rastogi, dismissed the petition filed by Bhatt.

“We are not inclined to entertain the petition. The same is devoid of merits. We dismiss it,” the bench said.

Maninder Singh, former Additional Solicitor General (ASG) and senior Supreme Court lawyer, appearing for the state of Gujarat told the apex court that it should not entertain Bhatt’s petition.

Singh further told the court that the trial in the custodial death case, against Bhatt has been completed and the judgment is likely to be pronounced, by the Jamnagar Sessions Court in Gujarat, on June 20 or July first week.

The Gujarat Police had opposed his plea, calling it a “tactic to delay the outcome of the case”.

Bhatt, sacked in 2015 is an accused in the 1989 custodial death case when he was posted as the additional superintendent of police in Gujarat’s Jamnagar. Bhatt, along with other officers, had then detained more than 133 persons, including Vaishnani, for rioting during a Bharat Bandh.

With agency inputs