Palanpur: The Gujarat Police’s plea seeking remand of former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in relation to the 22-year-old case involving allegedly planting of drugs to arrest a man was rejected by a court in Palanpur.

On Wednesday, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of police had detained Bhatt and after that, it held inspector of Palanpur police station I B Vyas on Wednesday.

The CID in its plea while producing both of them before Additional Judicial Magistrate V R Charan, sought for their custody extending up to 14 days.

Defense lawyers pointed out while arguing against the grant of custody, that the case was 22 years old and a petition was already pending with the Supreme Court in this regard.

But the magistrate rejected the CID’s demand after hearing the arguments and sent both the accused in judicial custody at sub-jail of Palanpur.

In 1996, Sanjiv Bhatt held the post of superintendent of police for Banaskantha district.

On recovering allegedly around one kg of opium in 1996, the CID arrested Sumersingh Rajpurohit over the charges of keeping drugs with him, a lawyer by profession.

According to the police, the drug was found in a room of a hotel rented by Rajpurohit in the district of Palanpur.

But later on, a probe disclosed that Rajpurohit was in fact falsely charged by the police about the crime in order to put pressure on him to leave a dispute over property at his hometown Pali located in Rajasthan.

Directing the CID to complete the probe within three months, the Gujarat High Court handed over the case to the crime agency in June this year.

On Wednesday, CID officials arrested Sanjiv Bhatt by claiming that the former IPS officer and others had allegedly hatched a conspiracy to arrest Rajpurohit by planting drugs with the intention of pressurizing him to leave the disputed property.

Sanjiv Bhatt always proved to be critical and the human rights advocate over the 2002 Gujarat riots and criticized the then chief minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi. He was sacked by the Union Home Ministry in August 2015 for “unauthorized absence” from the service.

Post Godhra incident, in which kar-sevaks were burnt to death in a standing train at Godhra, Gujarat, there was a meeting called by the then chief minister Narendra Modi and was attended by top police officials. Bhatt alleged that in the meeting, Modi directed top police officials to allow Hindus to vent out their anger against the Muslims.

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