It's been fixed in Sphinx by using a dedicated systemd script: http://sphinxsearch.com/bugs/view.php?id=2321
Hum... wait... blade106 is me... so I've already hit the bug 2 years ago, and found the fix :-)
In the meanwhile, Debian dropped the package in Jessie, so I've changed the installation script, that's why I'm here again.
Debian should include the systemd service script, as it is in the source tarball from Sphinx website.
