Gujarat high court reserves order on Pradeep Sharma’s plea

The Gujarat high court on Wednesday reserved its order after hearing the final arguments on the petition filed by IAS officer Pradeep Sharma seeking quashing of the corruption case lodged against him.

As per the details of the case registered against him in Bhuj under the Prevention of Corruption Act, Sharma is alleged to have misused his office to allot a plot of land at half its market price to the company, Welspun, in Varshamedi village in Anjar.

This had allegedly caused a huge monetary loss to the state exchequer as Welspun was charged only Rs12 lakh for the land whose value was assessed at Rs24 lakh by the authority.

Further, the police have alleged that Sharma had been using two Sim cards provided by Welspun which had paid Rs46,000 as the bill for the calls made by the IAS officer using the two cards.

However, during the hearing on Wednesday, Sharma's counsel argued that, for this, the investigating officer of the case had been interrogating him for long and that the interrogation should be stopped.

The counsel further said that the case should be quashed as there was no material evidence to prove the allegations against Sharma.

The state government objected to the arguments of Sharma's counsel. He stated that the police would henceforth not interrogate the IAS officer but the case against him cannot be quashed.