'Life sentence in custodial death case will not be frozen, Sanjiv Bhatt will not be granted bail'; Supreme Court rejects plea

The Supreme Court has not commuted the life sentence of former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in a custodial death case. The Supreme Court has rejected Sanjiv Bhatt's plea to stay the sentence. The Supreme Court also said that Sanjiv Bhatt cannot be granted bail. The verdict was given by a bench comprising Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta.

Meanwhile, the bench directed that Bhatt's appeal filed in the Supreme Court be considered on priority. "We do not want to grant bail to Sanjiv Bhatt. The bail application is rejected. This will not affect the hearing of the appeal. The hearing of the appeal is being expedited," the bench said while pronouncing the verdict in the court.

Sanjiv Bhatt is serving a life sentence in a 1990 custodial death case. Prabhudas Madhavji Vaishnani, who was taken into custody in 1990 when Sanjiv Bhatt was the Jamnagar ASP, died. Prabhudas' death came after he was released on bail. In June 2019, the Jamnagar Sessions Court sentenced Sanjiv Bhatt and constable Praveen Singh Sala to life imprisonment in a case registered in this regard.

Sanjiv Bhatt had responded at the time that the case was a vendetta by the BJP. Meanwhile, a Gujarat court had acquitted Sanjiv Bhatt in the 1997 custodial torture case. Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Mukesh Pandya acquitted Sanjiv Bhatt, citing lack of evidence. The court had given its verdict last year in the case when Sanjiv Bhatt was the Porbandar SP.

Sanjiv Bhatt had said that he was on the BJP's hit list after he gave a statement to the Supreme Court on February 17, 2002, about the conspiracy that paved the way for the Gujarat genocide led by Narendra Modi. Bhatt, who completed his MTech from IIT Mumbai, qualified as an IPS officer in 1988. He was the Deputy Commissioner of the Gujarat Intelligence Bureau from 1999 to 2002. He was also in charge of the security of the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi.