The Gujarat High Court (HC) on Wednesday dismissed a petition moved by suspended IAS officer Pradeep Sharma, in which the latter had sought direction to state authorities to register an FIR against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and others in connection with the alleged snooping row. A single judge bench of HC comprising Justice G R Udhwani dismissed the petition on the ground that Sharma had alternate remedy available to approach the concerned magisterial court to get his complaint registered. Dismissing the petition, Justice Udhwani held that Sharma’s petition was not maintainable under the provisions of Article 226 of the Constitution and that he should avail the alternate remedy of approaching the magisterial court if the police authorities were not registering the FIR. Two investigative news portals — gulail.com and cobrapost.com — have revealed some taped telephonic conversations between former Home Minister and a close aide of Modi, Amit Shah, and Gujarat-cadre suspended IPS officer G L Singhal, in which Shah is heard ordering snooping on a woman architect at the behest of one “saheb”. These taped conversations were submitted to the CBI by Singhal during the investigation of the 2004 Ishrat Jahan encounter case. Sharma had alleged that Modi had ordered this and the woman architect’s snooping and so, demanded registration of an FIR under the provisions of the IPC and Indian Telegraph Act. Earlier, Sharma had gone to Sector VII Police Station of Gandhinagar to get the FIR registered, but the police did not register the same. He had later approached Gandhinagar SP Sharad Singhal, and Gujarat DGP P C Thakur, for the same reason but in vain. Sharma had approached the HC, stating that the act of non-registration of the FIR by the state authorities was a clear-cut violation of Supreme Court’s directives to register an FIR as and when a complaint comes.
