Ahmedabad:
A periods court docket on Monday sentenced former IAS officer Pradeep Sharma to 5 years in jail and fined him Rs 75,000 in a corruption case courting again to 2004 when he was the collector of Kutch district in Gujarat.
The court docket of principal district and periods decide KM Sojitra convicted him in a case registered by Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) pertaining to the allotment of a bit of land to Welspun Group at a value that allegedly brought about a lack of Rs 1.2 crore to the federal government exchequer.
The court docket discovered Mr Sharma responsible part 13 (2) (felony misconduct by a public servant) and part 11 (public servants acquiring an undue benefit with out consideration) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
He was sentenced to 5 years in jail and fined Rs 50,000 wonderful below part 13(2), and given a 3 12 months sentence and wonderful of Rs 25,000 below part 11, public prosecutor Kalpesh Goswami mentioned, including each the sentences will run concurrently.
Mr Sharma is at the moment lodged in a jail in Bhuj in one other corruption case.
The court docket carried out a joint trial for 3 corruption instances associated to the allotment of land to the Welspun Group, Goswami mentioned.
As per the case element, Mr Sharma had allotted land to the corporate at a value which was 25 % of the prevailing price, inflicting a loss to the federal government exchequer.
In return, the Welspun Group allegedly made Mr Sharma’s spouse a 30 per cent companion in Worth Packaging, considered one of its subsidiaries, and prolonged her a good thing about Rs 29.5 lakh.
Mr Sharma was arrested by ACB on September 30, 2014 for allegedly accepting Rs 29 lakh bribe from the personal firm when he was the collector of Kutch in 2004.
Mr Sharma, who’s going through a number of corruption instances, had been at loggerheads with the state authorities when it was headed by Narendra Modi.
He had sought a CBI probe into alleged snooping on a girl architect after two information portals launched CDs of purported telephonic conversations between Union Residence Minister Amit Shah, who was then Gujarat’s minister of state for dwelling, and two prime state police officers.
The conversations, purportedly between August and September 2009, referred to a ‘saheb’, which portals alleged was the then Gujarat CM at whose occasion snooping was executed, a cost denied by Shah.
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