NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday listed for the third week of January the petition filed by former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Sanjiv Bhatt to suspend his sentence in a custodial death case of 1990.
A three-judge bench of the apex court, headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan and also comprising Justices M R Shah and R Subhash Reddy, posted the petition filed by Sanjiv Bhatt for hearing in the third week of January. "We will list the matter in the third week of January in the case," the bench led by Justice Bhushan said today.
The top court accepted the request made by Bhatt's lawyer, Farrukh Rasheed, who pleaded for the hearing to be postponed to the third week of January.
Bhatt had filed the Special Leave Petition (SLP) before the Supreme Court challenging the Gujarat High Court's order, which declined to suspend his sentence of life imprisonment awarded by a Jamnagar court on June 20, 2019, in a 30-year-old custodial death case.
"The HC ought to have appreciated that the trial court did not consider evidence of court witness P Pandey, Investigating Officer, then superintendent of police, Crime Investigation Department (Crime), Ahmedabad, who recorded the statement of different police officers, clearly indicating no beating or ill-treatment of the arrested accused," Bhatt in his plea claimed, before the apex court.
Bhatt was sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the custodial death of Jamjodhpur resident, Prabhudas Vaishnani in November 1990.
Bhatt, in his SLP, claimed before the Supreme Court that there is a "political vendetta", against him, and further said that the charges were framed against him without due (proper) sanction from the state government.