Suspended Gujarat IAS officer Pradip Sharma convicted for keeping cellphone in jail 12 years ago, gets one month in jail

The court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate N A Gadhvi on Friday pronounced Sharma – who has crossed the age of retirement – guilty of violating Section 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The court also imposed a fine of Rs 200 on him.

Sharma was arrested in 2010 for allegedly allotting land to WIL and JSL at lower rates while he was the collector of Kutch from 2003 to 2006 and thereby, causing a loss to the state’s exchequer. Following this, he was lodged at Palara jail as an undertrial.

Kalpesh Goswami, Special Public Prosecutor in the case, told The Indian Express: “During trial, we submitted that a cellphone, a battery and a SIM card were recovered from Sharma while he was lodged at Palara Special Jail despite a notification being in force, prohibiting keeping such devices inside jail.”
“….We submitted call detail records and locations of telecommunication towers, which facilitated the calls to prove that Sharma had not only kept the phone but had made calls from inside jail. This, we underlined, was not expected from an IAS officer who while serving as district magistrate, himself had issued many such notifications,” he added.

According to the prosecution’s case, based on a tip-off received by J N Rajgor, then superintendent of Kutch district police, officers of the Local Crime Branch (LCB) and the Special Operations Group (SOG) had on June 13, 2011 raided barrack 11 of Palara jail where Sharma was lodged as an undertrial. During the raid, a cellphone in working condition was found in his possession.

“In his defence, Sharma argued that he was not aware about the notification prohibiting cellphones inside the jail. But we argued that it was incredible to believe that an IAS officer would not know such a rule and that he had violated the law knowingly and wilfully,” Goswami said.

The Kutch police had booked Sharma under IPC sections related to criminal conspiracy, forgery and violating notification issued by a public servant as well as under the Prisons Act.

V M Gohil, then LCB inspector, had probed the case and filed a chargesheet. However, Sharma had moved the court of chief judicial magistrate (CJM) of Bhuj, challenging the chargesheet on the grounds that probe was not conducted properly and that the case against him under IPC Section 188 should be treated as a separate one. However, the CJM had rejected his plea.

Subsequently, the Bhuj district and sessions court also rejected his appeal. Sharma then moved the Gujarat High Court but withdrew his appeal eventually even as the HC observed that the state government may file a separate case against Sharma under IPC Section 188 before a competent court.

Consequently, the state filed a separate case in which Sharma was convicted on Friday even as the case of alleged forgery and under the Prisons Act is pending against him.

At present, Sharma is lodged at Palara Special Jail since his arrest on March 5 this year in a separate case. The Gujarat CID (Crime) had booked him for allegedly causing loss to the state exchequer while regularising an encroached plot of land in Kutch when he was the district collector between 2003 and 2006.