The Gujarat CID officials arrested sacked IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt on Wednesday from his residence in Ahmedabad in connection with two-decade-old case of alleged abduction and framing a Rajasthan-based lawyer in a crime related to narcotics.
In 1996, a Rajasthan-based lawyer Sumer Singh Rajpurohit was allegedly abducted and framed in a narcotics case on the instruction of Bhatt (when he was Banaskantha SP) from a hotel in north Gujarat town Palanpur. Subsequently, Rajpurohit had filed a case against Bhatt and several others in Pali, Rajasthan.
In connection with the case, the Gujarat High Court had ordered to form a CID SIT. The SIT found that Bhatt had framed Rajpurohit by filing false case.
According to Ashish Bhatia, DGP CID (crime), police personnel arrested Bhatt in the case and also detain seven others in the same matter.
The Rajasthan lawyer in his complaint claimed that he was abducted by police in civil dress in order to oblige then sitting judge of Gujarat High Court justice RR Jain. Rajpurohit alleged that the false case was filed against him to force his family to evict a rented commercial property belonging to Justice Jain’s sister in Pali town of Rajasthan.
He went on to say that he was not only abducted by implicated in a false Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) case after Gujarat police found nearly 1 kg opium from a hotel in Palanpur. According to him, he never booked a hotel room in Palanpur and when the police raided the hotel, he was in Pali.
Rajpurohit further alleged that after abducting him, Bhatt and his juniors pressurised him to vacate the rented property and threatened him to frame under NDPS Act. According to him, he had no other option but to vacate the property at that point of time. The 1988 batch Gujarat cadre IPS officer came in controversy in the year 2011 after he submitted an affidavit in the apex court accusing the then Chief Minister of Gujarat and current Prime Minister Narendra Modi of complicity in the 2002 riots. Later on he was suspended in the same year accusing him of unauthorised absence from duty, not appearing before an inquiry committee and using his official car while not on duty. Four years later in the year 2015, he was sacked from service by the state Home Department following his sex video CD that went viral on social media.
In July 2018, the Vijay Rupani Government had withdrawn security of former IPS officer. In protest to the State Government’s move, Bhatt had written a letter to Gujarat CM not to remove security cover given to him as directly or indirectly security of his entire family was under threat. In 2012, Gujarat Assembly polls, Bhatt’s wife Shweta contested against Modi on Congress ticket from Maninagar constituency. She however lost by more than 70,000 votes.