The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to suspend a 20-year jail sentence imposed on former Indian Police Service officer Sanjiv Bhatt in a 1996 drug planting case, Live Law reported.

Bhatt is already serving a life sentence in a separate 1990 custodial death case.

The drug planting matter was listed before a bench of Justices JK Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi.

Appearing for Bhatt, advocate Kapil Sibal submitted that his client had already served seven years and three months of the sentence.

The bench told him that Bhatt could instead seek an early hearing of the appeal, Live Law reported. Sibal, however, noted that Bhatt had already undergone over half his sentence.

The court said that the the quantity of drugs involved in the case, 5 kg, was high.

Sibal, however, said the prosecution had not proved this allegation and that the conviction was for possession of 1.015 kg of opium, Live Law reported. Since this did not amount to a commercial quantity, the relevant section of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act would not apply, he contended.

Advocate Maninder Singh, appearing for the state government, argued that Bhatt, who was serving as deputy superintendent of police at the time, had conspired to procure opium and plant it in a guest house to frame the complainant.

Bhatt even gave a constable money to buy the drugs, Singh claimed.

The bench said it was not inclined to entertain Bhatt’s application and went on to dismiss it.

The case

Bhatt was arrested in 2018 in a case based on a complaint by a Rajasthan-based lawyer, Sumer Singh Rajpurohit, who accused the ex-IPS officer and others of planting 1.15 kg of opium at a Palanpur hotel in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district, where he was staying in 1996.

At the time of the alleged incident, Bhatt was serving as the district superintendent of police in Banaskantha. Another officer, Inspector IB Vyas, was also named in the case. Vyas turned approver in the case in 2021.

According to the prosecution, Bhatt and his co-accused conspired to frame the lawyer under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

Bhatt had moved the Supreme Court in 2011 against Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat at the time, and accused him of encouraging the 2002 communal riots in the state that left 1,000 people dead, most of them Muslims.

Bhatt claimed that he had attended a meeting at Modi’s residence on February 27, 2002, during which the former chief minister allegedly told police officers to “allow Hindus to vent their anger”.