Snoopgate: Gujarat govt hits back ex-IAS officer in SC

New Delhi: Attacking suspended IAS officer Pradeep Sharma for raking up the alleged snooping controversy, the Gujarat government has told the Supreme Court that no one’s right to privacy was violated and the concerned lady was even thankful for action taken by state agencies. In an affidavit before the apex court, the state government submitted that Sharma was himself facing various criminal cases and also involved in “illicit relationships” with several married women who are his subordinate officers and relatives. [caption id=“attachment_1325029” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File photo of Pradeep Sharma. IBNLive[/caption] The affidavit, filed by an under secretary, referred to the proceedings before State Women Commission in which the lady was present along with her father and husband. The Chief Secretary was also present there. “I am instructed by the Chief Secretary, state of Gujarat, who remained present during the proceedings referred above to mention that the lady had full knowledge of the steps taken by the state agencies at the request of her father and the lady has remained thankful for the timely help rendered which, even according to her, was absolutely essential and required under the circumstances,” the affadavit read. “The lady is seriously perturbed, distressed and disturbed because of the false, scandalous, defamatory and maligning campaign using her name to achieve some hidden sinister agenda ostensibly to protect her ‘right to privacy’ an individual right, which she sincerely considers not to have been breached,” the affidavit said. The controversy broke out when two news portals released CDs of purported telephonic conversations between Modi aide Amit Shah, who was then state Home Minister, and two top state police officials relating to snooping on a woman in 2009. The conversations, purportedly between August and September 2009, do not specifically mention Modi by name but refers to a ‘saheb’, which the portals claimed was the Gujarat Chief Minister at whose instance the snooping was carried out, a charge denied by Shah. The state government filed its response on a petition filed by Sharma seeking CBI probe in snoopgate controversy. Sharma, a 1984 batch IAS officer, had in 2011 filed the petition for handing over the cases against him to CBI and in November 2013, he took the controversy over the snoopgate to the apex court. Countering the allegation levelled by Sharma, the state government said that it came to know several facts regarding large-scale suspicious financial transactions, amassing of benami properties by him and about his illicit relationship after his phones were kept under surveillance in 2009. “The details of mobile conversations made by him shockingly revealed several serious and shocking facts which can be broadly classified as under: a. Large-scale suspicious financial transactions by/at the behest of applicant to USA which are being probed as Hawala transaction. b. Amassing of benami properties by him c. Disproportionate assets acquired by applicant beyond his known source of income. e. Illicit relationship of Sharma with several married women containing pornographic and obscene conversation with them which include his subordinate officers, wifes of relatives etc,” it said. The state government also submitted that Sharma has committed contempt by not removing the personal allegations against Modi from petition as directed by the apex court on 12 May, 2011 order. The court had earlier refused Sharma’s plea to allow him to travel to the United States to meet his wife and son, who are American citizens. PTI