IAS Pradeep Sharma arrested in land scam

The arrest of senior IAS officer Pradeep Sharma, municipal commissioner of Bhavnagar, in a Rs70 crore land scam has shocked the state bureaucracy.

The CID crime arrested Sharma on Wednesday morning for irregularities in the allotment of land for Bheed Bazaar, a wholesale market in Bhuj which was destroyed in the 2001 earthquake. The police arrested Sharma from his residence in Bhavnagar and took him to Bhuj.

The state government had allotted 17 acres of land on the foothills of Bhujiya hillock to the traders of Bheed Bazaar who had lost their shops in the earthquake, said a source.

The traders were, however, asked to procure a G-5 certificate from the district collector of Kutch before they could lay claim to the land.

But many traders, who were not even affected by the calamity, managed to get land by presenting fake certificates. A complaint in this regard was also filed by Henry Chako, Kutch secretary of All India Anti Corruption Crime Preventive Council, an NGO.