Umamageswari Maruthappan
The Supreme Court on 22nd January 2021 adjourned the hearing of a petition filed by former IPS Officer Sanjay Bhatt at the request of his Counsel, Advocate-on-Record Farrukh Rasheed who requested the case to be adjourned on ground of indisposition of the Senior Counsel.
The SC Bench comprising of Justices Ashok Bhushan, MR Shah and R Subhash Reddy listed the matter for hearing on 27th January 2021.
The Special Leave Petition seeks to suspend the life imprisonment of the former IPS Officer in a 1990 custodial death case.
The petitioner Sanjay Bhatt, who is currently in Palanpur Jail, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Sessions Court in Jamnagar in June 2019 almost 3 decades after the incidence.
In 1990, when Bhatt was the Assistant Superintendent of Police Jamnagar, he had arrested Vaishnani and several other persons on the charge of rioting during a Bharat Bandh.
It is alleged that Mr. Bhatt was responsible for the death of Vaishnani because he had taken the accused under his custody. However, the former IPS Officer denied the same stating the death was caused several days after the release of Vaishnani.
An FIR was registered and the case came before the Magistrate in 1995. However, the same was stayed by the Gujarat High Court till 2011.
The case got new developments post 2015 and Bhatt was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Sessions Court on June 2019. The same was appealed before the Gujarat High Court which rejected the appeal on October 2019.
“..it appears that the applicant has scant respect for the Courts and is in the habit of misusing the process of law and scandalizing the Court,” said a Division Bench of Justices Bela M. Trivedi and AC Rao which refused to suspend the sentence.
Following this, the petitioner then appealed to the Apex Court challenging the refusal of Gujarat High Court.