Senior IAS officer arrested in Gujarat
By IANSWednesday, January 6, 2010
GANDHINAGAR - A senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer was Wednesday arrested in connection with irregularities in allotting land to the 2001 earthquake victims in Gujarat’s Kutch district.
The state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) arrested Pradeep Sharma from his house here for irregularities in land allotment during his tenure as district collector. He is currently posted as the municipal commissioner of Bhavnagar.
He is now being taken to Bhuj, headquarters of Kutch district.
Born in 1955, the Gujarat Administrative Service (GAS) cadre officer was nominated to the IAS in 1994 and was the district collector of Kutch from 2003 to 2006. He is the brother of Kuldip Sharma, an additional director general of police (ADG) of Gujarat.
The arrest followed a private complaint filed in the court of the chief judicial magistrate in 2006.
The case involved allotment of 17 acres of land valued at over Rs.70 crore to 479 people. Subsequent investigations revealed that almost 400 of those allotted plots were not entitled to it. The district collector was also the authority to issue the certificate of entitlement.
