Gujarat court sentences ex-IAS officer, three others to 5-year jail terms in land allotment case

Former IAS officer Pradeep Sharma sentenced to five years in prison for land allotment irregularities in Gujarat.

A district court in Bhuj town of Gujarat on Saturday (April 19, 2025) sentenced former IAS officer Pradeep Sharma to five years of rigorous imprisonment in a 2011 case on irregularities in the allotment of government land to a private company when he was then Kutch district collector.

Also read: Former Gujarat IAS officer Pradeep Sharma gets five years in jail in 2004 corruption case

The court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate J.V. Buddha in Bhuj town of Kutch district sentenced Mr. Sharma, urban planner Natubhai Desai, then mamlatdar Narendra Prajapati and then resident deputy collector Ajitsinh Zala to five years imprisonment for causing loss to the public exchequer in the land deal and also imposed a fine of ₹10,000 each on them.

The case pertains to irregularities committed in the allotment of government land to Saw Pipes Pvt. Ltd. in 2004 when Mr. Sharma was the Kutch collector.

The court said Mr. Sharma's sentence would commence after he undergoes the five-year sentence given by a sessions court in Ahmedabad on January 20 this year, in a 2004 corruption case.

A First Information Report (FIR) was registered against Mr. Sharma and three others at CID Crime Rajkot zone police station in 2011 under Section 409 (criminal breach of trust committed by public servants), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 217 (a public servant knowingly disobeying a direction of the law) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Mr. Sharma was arrested on March 4, 2011.