Graft case: Retd IAS officer Pradeep Sharma in 2-day Gujarat CID custody
Sharma was arrested by the CID team from Gandhinagar on Friday, a day after a case was registered against him and Shah in Bhuj on Thursday. Shah was also arrested on Friday.
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Retired IAS officer Pradeep Sharma. (Express Archives) Retired IAS officer Pradeep Sharma and Sanjay Shah, a senior executive of a construction company that has executed a number of government civil work projects, have been sent to two-day custody of the Gujarat CID after they were arrested in connection with a case of alleged cheating, misuse of power and corruption. They were produced in a court in Bhuj in the Kutch district on Saturday.
Sharma was arrested by the CID team from Gandhinagar on Friday, a day after a case was registered against him and Shah in Bhuj on Thursday. Shah was also arrested on Friday. The CID produced them in a court in Bhuj with an application seeking their remand. The CID Crime had launched an FIR against Sharma, Shah, and others under IPC sections 209 (dishonestly making false claim in court) 217 (public servant disobeying direction of law with intent to save a person from punishment or property from forfeiture) among others.
The CID registered an offence after mamlatdar of Bhuj town filed a complaint alleging Sharma, as then district collector of Kutch, granted Shah’s application seeking 1.38 acres of government land contiguous to Airport Road in Bhuj town for agricultural purposes in 2004 while overruling objections of the then town planning officer of Bhuj.
Around a month after Sharma allotted Shah the land, the latter applied for converting that land into non-agricultural (NA) for residential purposes and Sharma approved it in violation of a condition he himself had imposed while granting Shah that piece of government land.
“We submitted there was a prima facie case against both the accused. We underlined that Sharma and Shah acted with malafide intent to cheat and cause loss to state exchequer. The court granted our plea and sent the two accused to custody of CID Crime for two days,” Kalpesh Goswami, district government pleader for Kutch said, adding Shah is an executive of Cube Construction, a firm which has been hired by various government agencies in recent years for a number of civil work projects.
As per the FIR, Sharma had allotted Shah the government land after the latter paid Rs 6.78 lakh while the present market value of the same land is estimated to be around Rs19 crore.
This is the 14th case to be filed against Sharma.
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