A Palanpur court in Banaskantha district has denied bail to the tainted former cop Sanjiv Bhatt in the drug planting case that dates back to 1998. The disgraced cop had been arrested in September this year by the Gujarat CID over a case of planting drugs. The probe was underway after the directions of the High Court.

Disgraced former cop Sanjiv Bhatt had contested that he has long-standing in the society with movable and immovable assets and hence, is not at flight risk. He had also asserted that he has no criminal past and has been interrogated already. He told the court that on the basis of this record, he should be granted bail in the case.

The CID vehemently contested his bail. The probe agency said that Sanjiv Bhatt was the mastermind behind the drug plan that framed Rajasthan lawyer in a false case. Rajpurohit, the lawyer who was framed by Sanjiv Bhatt to get a shop in Pali vacated, had also opposed Bhatt’s bail plea and filed an affidavit in this regard.

The court was less than moved by Sanjiv Bhatt’s submissions and came down heavily on the disgraced cop. It cited Bhatt’s false statements and bad behaviour before denying bail. The court also mentioned Sanjiv Bhatt’s criminal past and that if granted bail, he would be in a position to tamper with evidence since the case diary had already been tampered with.

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The court also mentioned Sanjiv Bhatt’s past behaviour while denying bail. Reportedly, the court observed that earlier, Bhatt had got bail from a Pali court in the same case on the condition that he would not leave the country. But the disgraced cop ended up leaving the country multiple times, disregarding his bail condition. Owing to his past behaviour, the court observed that if bail was granted to him, there was no guarantee that he would stick to his bail conditions.

It was also mentioned that in 2017, Sanjiv Bhatt had lied to the passport office and asserted that he had no cases or summons pending against him.

The plight of the victim, in this case, was also cited. The court observed that since Rajpurohit was a lawyer himself, he could continue to fight for justice, however, any ordinary person would have given up and accepted his fate.

In November, the CID chargesheet said that Sanjiv Bhatt, who was then the Superintendent of Police of Banaskantha district, gave Rs 20,000 to a policeman to buy opium from a particular place to falsely implicate the lawyer. He had instructed policemen to buy 1 kg of opium and plant it on the Rajasthan based lawyer. After the plant was complete, they conducted a fake raid to implicate the lawyer.

The lawyer, Sumer Singh Rajpurohit was allegedly kidnapped from Pali (Rajasthan) and the drugs were planted on him by Palanpur police. In a sordid twist, it was also alleged that the Palanpur police had done so to get the lawyer to vacate the property which allegedly belonged to the relative of the then Gujarat HC judge, Ramanlal Rajmal Jain.

Sanjiv Bhatt is accused of being the mastermind behind the entire operation of kidnapping the lawyer and plating the narcotics that implicated the Rajasthan based lawyer.