Suspended IAS officer Pradeep Sharma moves Gujarat HC for bail

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court on Monday issued notice to the state government while hearing the bail plea of suspended Gujarat-cadre IAS officer Pradeep Sharma, who is behind bars in a graft case. Hearing the bail application of Sharma, filed on 16 October, High Court judge AJ Desai issued the notice to the state government and posted the matter to Friday for a further hearing. [caption id=“attachment_1786663” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Suspended IPS officer Pradeep Sharma. IBNLive[/caption] “The bail application was filed on 16 October, but it came up for hearing today as there was the Diwali vacation. The court has adjourned the hearing and kept it on Friday,” said Sharma’s lawyer Narendra Jain. Earlier, on 10 October, a local court in Bhuj had denied bail to Sharma, who is behind bars in a case filed by the state’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 29 lakh. Sharma was arrested by ACB on 30 September for allegedly accepting the bribe from a private company when he was the Collector of Kutch district in 2004. According to the complaint, he had allotted a piece of land to the company at 25 percent of the prevailing market rates, enabling illegal benefits to the company and a loss of around Rs 1.2 crore to the Gujarat state exchequer. As per the complaint, in return, the company allegedly made Sharma’s wife a 30 percent partner in one of its subsidiaries called Value Packaging without any investment made by her and extended a benefit of Rs 29.5 lakh to her. Sharma, who faces five corruption cases, had filed a petition in Supreme Court alleging that he was being victimised by the state government and had sought a CBI inquiry into the cases filed against him. However, Supreme Court last month rejected his application. The suspended IAS officer’s name also figured in the ‘Snoopgate’ tapes, released by two online news portals which alleged that a woman was snooped upon in Gujarat at the behest of the then minister of state for home Amit Shah. PTI