AHMEDABAD: The Gujarat high court on Saturday rejected an application filed by ex-IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt requesting it to direct the trial court to delay the hearing of an application filed by his co-accused, his subordinate officer I B Vyas, to turn an approver in the alleged 1996 drug planting case in Palanpur.
Bhatt, who has been behind bars for three years now in this case, wants the hearing on Vyas’s plea to turn an approver and to be pardoned to take place after the hearing on a couple of his applications takes place. The hearing on his own application seeking certain documents from the prosecution is to take place when the court will hear the case in the courtroom.
The trial court in Porbandar rejected Bhatt’s request to defer the hearing on Vyas’s application. This led him to approach the high court. He argued that the state government and Vyas have acted in collusion and Vyas expressed a wish to turn an approver in the case after he was released on temporary bail and is out since then. He showed apprehension that the court would be influenced with the prosecution’s support to Vyas.
The state government opposed Bhatt’s application and submitted that it was his effort to delay the trial.
After hearing the arguments, Justice S H Vora said that as a co-accused, Bhatt has “no say” in the matter of Vyas’s application to turn approver. He will get an opportunity to cross-examine him, if the prosecution relies on his statement. The matter is strictly between the court and the accused so far as the pardon is concerned, and the court will take care of it. Bhatt and Vyas were booked under the NDPS Act on allegations of planting opium on a Rajasthan-based lawyer in a bid to evict him from a commercial property in Pali town.