Ahmedabad: A special PMLA court on Tuesday sent former IAS officer Pradeep Sharma to two-day custodial interrogation to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a money laundering case registered last year.
The ED’s case stems from a 2023 FIR filed by CID (Crime) in Bhuj, alleging Sharma illegally allotted land to Sanjay Shah while serving as Kutch district collector. During the investigation, Shah reportedly told the ED he paid a Rs 3 lakh as bribe, and the amount was paid to one Prakash Vazirani, who revealed that he paid Rs 2.50 lakh to Sharma and Rs 50,000 to then resident deputy collector Ajitsinh Zala.
The ED, after recording Sharma’s statement, sought his custody on a transfer warrant as he is currently imprisoned for another offence. This led Sharma to file an anticipatory bail petition, which was rejected by the PMLA court on Monday, said ED’s special prosecutor Sudhir Gupta.
Following this, ED sought Sharma’s remand for five days. ED’s special prosecutors, Gupta and Sanjay Thakkar, submitted that ED is scrutinising the records and they needed to confront the accused with the documents. The evidence suggests that there could be more money involved in this transaction.
The probe revealed that Sharma caused “an estimated financial loss of Rs 19 crore to the govt” by illegally allotting the land, and Shah had subsequently sought to convert the land for non-agricultural use, submitted the prosecutors. “The information related to utilisation and the parking of proceeds of crime in possession of the accused, which are in his particular knowledge, also warrants his custodial interrogation,” the remand application reads.
It was also submitted that the bribe amount of Rs 3 lakh is a part of the larger amount of the tainted money that was generated by the accused through criminal activities, which warrants further investigation.