Author: Dhananjay Mahapatra TNN
Publication: The Times of India
Date: January 18, 2014

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a plea to visit the US by IAS officer Pradeep Sharma, who has sought aCBI inquiry into unauthorized police surveillance ordered allegedly at Gujarat chief minister Narandra Modi’s behest on a woman and him.

Sharma’s counsel Prashant Bhushan said Modi and his government systematically victimized the IAS officer by implicating him in five false cases since 2010 after they suspected that he could be in possession of a CD allegedly containing evidence about the CM’s intimacy with the woman, which could be very damaging to the political ambitions of the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate.

Sharma was granted bail by the apex court in the fake passport case on December 13, 2011, but with the condition that his passport would not be returned to him “until disposal of all the five cases in which the petitioner is an accused”.

But Bhushan said Sharma’s wife and children were US citizens and he had last met them in October 2010. He said his brother Kuldeep Sharma, a senior police officer who he said had also been victimized by the Modi government, would stand guarantee for his return from the US.

Lawyers representing the Gujarat government opposed the plea for US visit saying Sharma was arrested from a Delhi hotel “where he was staying under a fake name and where he had submitted identity documents that were forged”. “The said fake driving licence, which was recovered by the investigating agency from the absconding IAS officer, was forged by him as it contained his real photograph but a fictitious Punjabi name,” Gujarat government’s lawyer said. He also alleged Sharma was found transferring money to his family in the US through hawala channels and was attempting to flee India through fake passport.

Gujarat govt has said that Pradeep Sharma (R) was arrested from a Delhi hotel where he was staying under a fake name using forged documents