Sanjiv Bhatt’s bail rejected, SC directs expedited hearing of his appeal

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the bail application of former Gujarat IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who is serving a life sentence in a 1990 custodial death case, and observed that its decision was confined to the plea for bail alone and would have no bearing on the merits of the appeal pending before the court.

A bench comprising Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, while dismissing the plea, directed that the hearing of the appeal be expedited, indicating that the legal process should not suffer undue delay even though it found no compelling reason to suspend the sentence at this stage.

Reading out the operative portion of the order, Justice Mehta stated that the Court was not inclined to enlarge Bhatt on bail and made it clear that its observations were restricted solely to the bail application and would not prejudice the final adjudication of the appeal filed by Bhatt and his co-accused.

The Court had earlier reserved the order on 28 February after hearing arguments in the Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by Bhatt challenging the January 2024 judgment of the Gujarat High Court, which had dismissed his appeal against conviction and sentence.

The case relates to the custodial death of one Prabhudas Madhavji Vaishnani in November 1990, when Bhatt, then posted as Assistant Superintendent of Police in Jamnagar, Gujarat, detained around 133 people under the stringent Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) following a communal riot in Jamjodhpur town during a Bharat Bandh.

Vaishnani, one of those detained, died in a hospital days after being released on bail, with the death alleged to be a result of custodial torture.

An FIR was registered against Bhatt and six other police officers based on a complaint filed by the deceased’s brother, Amrutlal Vaishnani. Though the state CID filed a closure report in 1995 citing lack of sanction for prosecution, the Magistrate rejected the report and took cognisance of the offences, but the trial was stayed by the Gujarat High Court for over a decade until the stay was lifted in 2011 after Bhatt deposed before the Nanavati and Mehta Commissions probing the 2002 Gujarat riots.

The Sessions Court in Jamnagar, in June 2019, sentenced Bhatt and a constable, Pravinsinh Zala, to life imprisonment under sections 302 (murder), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), and 506(1) (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), while convicting five other policemen under lesser charges of custodial violence. Their convictions were upheld by the Gujarat High Court in January 2024, with the Division Bench finding no merit in the appeals and affirming the reasoning of the trial court.

Before the Supreme Court, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Bhatt, argued that his client had already been in custody for over five years and contended that the medical evidence on record did not support the conclusion of custodial torture, asserting that Vaishnani’s death was due to pre-existing medical conditions and that he had not reported any abuse immediately after his release. Sibal claimed that there was no direct evidence connecting Bhatt to the alleged acts of violence.

Countering these submissions, Senior Advocate Maninder Singh, representing the Gujarat government, contended that the victim's death was directly attributable to the torture he was subjected to while in police custody, including forceful sit-ups and crawling that led to renal failure.

Singh also highlighted Bhatt’s alleged criminal antecedents, including a separate 20-year sentence in a case involving the planting of drugs to falsely implicate a lawyer, and argued that there were no exceptional circumstances warranting bail.