The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a plea by former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Sanjiv Bhatt to submit additional evidence to back his appeal pending in the Gujarat High Court against conviction in a 1990 custodial death case.
A Bench of Justices M.R. Shah and C.T. Ravikumar also rejected Mr. Bhatt’s plea seeking recusal of Justice Shah from hearing the matter.
Mr. Bhatt had contended that there was a reasonable apprehension of bias as Justice Shah, as High Court judge, had castigated the petitioner while hearing his plea linked to the same First Information Report (FIR).
The apex court Bench further requested the High Court to dispose of the appeal filed by Mr. Bhatt in accordance with the law after reappreciation of the evidence considered by the trial court.
In August 2022, Mr. Bhatt had withdrawn his plea in the apex court seeking suspension of his life sentence in the 30-year-old custodial death case.
The High Court had earlier refused to suspend Mr. Bhatt’s sentence and observed he had scant respect for courts and deliberately tried to misuse the process of law.
The case relates to the custodial death of Prabhudas Vaishnani, who was among 133 people caught by the Jamnagar police after a communal riot broke out following a bandh call in view of BJP leader L K Advani’s Rath Yatra.
