Bhuj (Guj), Apr 19 (PTI) A court in Gujarat’s Kutch district on Saturday 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 that caused loss to the public exchequer when he was the then district collector.

The court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate JV Buddha in Bhuj sentenced Sharma, urban planner Natubhai Desai, then mamlatdar Narendra Prajapati and then resident deputy collector Ajitsinh Zala to five years imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 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 Sharma was the collector of Kutch district.

The court said 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 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.

Sharma was arrested on March 4, 2011.

Special public prosecutor H B Jadeja said the court took into account 52 documentary evidence and statements of 18 prosecution witnesses.

According to the prosecution, Sharma committed irregularities in allotting land through different orders to Saw Pipes Private Limited to set up an industrial unit by flouting rules and regulations of the state government in this regard, thereby causing financial loss to the public exchequer.

The allotment of land was above the cap of 2 hectares, and it flouted the Gujarat government’s Revenue Department resolution dated June 6, 2003, authorising the collector to allot up to two hectares of land for industrial purposes.

The prosecution submitted that the accused committed the criminal act by going beyond his authority and without taking into account the orders of the state government, with the sole intention of financially benefitting the company and causing financial loss to the government.

The other three accused committed the crime of conspiring with the main accused during the District Land Valuation Committee’s meeting and acted in collusion, it said. PTI COR KA PD ARU