Opinion Explained: The many criminal cases against Gujarat ex-IAS officer, Pradeep Sharma

The 1994 -batch officer is facing 15 investigations by Central and Gujarat state agencies. Here is what to know.

Who is Pradeep Sharma?

Pradeep Sharma, a chemistry graduate, joined the Gujarat Administrative Service in 1981 as Deputy Collector. In 1999, he was nominated to the IAS at the seniority of the 1994 cadre.

He has variously served as the Municipal Commissioner of Jamnagar and Bhavnagar, and as the Collector of Kutch-Bhuj and Rajkot until his suspension on January 8, 2010. He retired from service on June 30, 2015, five years after he was first arrested on corruption charges.

So far, he has spent five years and seven months in judicial custody in the various cases against him.

Sharma has consistently maintained that he is being “victimised” and “hounded” by the Gujarat government for various reasons. In the past, he levelled grave allegations against the then-Chief Minister Narendra Modi, in connection with the alleged illegal surveillance of a woman architect in 2009, which subsequently came to light in 2013.

Run-ins with the government

In April 2011, Sharma wrote to former CBI chief RK Raghavan, who headed the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) investigating the Godhra riots cases. He sought to depose about an alleged phone call he claimed to have received from the Chief Minister’s Office in 2002. The call allegedly asked him to tell his brother, IPS officer Kuldip Sharma, “to abstain from taking proactive measures in favour of minorities”, according to a report of The Indian Express.

The SIT, which did not take his deposition, later gave a clean chit to the then-Modi government on its actions during the riots, upheld last year by the Supreme Court.

Kuldip Sharma, who served as the Inspector General of Police, Ahmedabad Range and has been a member of the Congress party since 2015, has also run afoul of the state. In February, a magisterial court in Bhuj convicted him and Girish Vasavada, retired Deputy Superintendent of Police, in a case dating to his tenure as the district Superintendent of Police (SP) of Kutch in 1984. Kuldip Sharma was sentenced to three months of imprisonment, which has been stayed pending appeal.

Cases dating to stint as Kutch Collector

All the cases registered against the 70-year-old former IAS officer date back about 20 years. Sharma was posted as District Collector in Kutch in April 2003 while rehabilitation work was in full swing in the state after the January 2001 earthquake in Bhuj.

The first of these dates back to 2006 when a complaint was registered by Henry James Chacko, an RTI activist, with a Bhuj magisterial court. The plaint alleged irregularities in land allotment in Bhuj during Sharma’s tenure as the Collector of the district. Subsequently, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) booked Sharma and some office bearers of the Bhuj Bazar Navnirman Charitable Trust (formed by quake-affected grain sellers) for alleged forgery and criminal conspiracy. The Rajkot Zone of CID arrested Sharma in January 2010, when he was serving as the Municipal Commissioner of Bhavnagar.

Between 2008 and 2024, Sharma has been implicated in 12 FIRs filed by the Gujarat Police, while the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has registered two cases under the jurisdiction of the Anti-Money Laundering and Organised Crime Branch (AMZO). The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), Gujarat, is currently investigating a case of Disproportionate Assets (DA).

The CID Crime, Rajkot Zone, lodged three more FIRs in 2010 for illegally granting land to the Kutch-based Welspun group at “discriminatory” rates. One of these cases allegedly granted Sharma’s wife, Shyamal, 30% partnership in an associated company, while another alleged that the group had footed a mobile phone bill of Rs 2.24 lakhs for a SIM card they had given Sharma for use. He was charged under the Prevention of Corruption Act and accused of illegally transferring money to various countries and into family accounts. The ED registered a case for alleged money laundering in 2016 against Sharma and others, based on the three FIRs.

Three acquittals, three convictions

Sharma’s lawyer, RJ Goswami, told The Indian Express that the former officer has been acquitted in all three cases concerning Welspun. However, the Special Court for PMLA in Ahmedabad (Rural) convicted Sharma in the ED case on January 20 based on the three Rajkot CID cases.

Goswami said, “We have appealed in the High Court against the order of the Ahmedabad Rural court… Sharma has been acquitted in all three cases connected with Welspun and Value Packaging. His wife had made an investment as an individual in Value Packaging, along with the wife of a former Additional Chief Secretary of Gujarat; but only Sharma was booked in the case of corruption… Our contention is that his wife was an individual and free to have her business and even if there is a transaction between husband and wife, it cannot amount to corruption.”

Sharma has been convicted in two other cases — on April 19 by the Bhuj court in the 2011 FIR of CID Crime Rajkot for allotment of land to Saw Pipes Pvt. Ltd. as well as for one month by a trial court in the 2011 FIR of the Bhuj Taluka Police Station in the case of the mobile phone found in prison. The revision application in the case is pending before the HC, according to advocate Goswami.

Sharma’s lawyer in the Bhuj court, Bharat Dholakia, told The Indian Express that Sharma is preparing to appeal against his April 19 conviction.

He has been granted bail in all other pending cases.