Pradeep Nirankarnath Sharma
Pradeep Nirankarnath Sharma is a former IAS officer of Gujarat. In 2013, he filed a petition in supreme court alleging that Narendra Modi had spied on an architect using state machinery and had called for a CBI probe into it.
He is facing at least five cases of corruption and is accused of illegal land allocation in Kutch and Bhuj.
Family
He is brother of Kuldeep Sharma, a former IPS officer who had accused Amit Shah, then Home Minister of state of accepting a bribe of 2.5 crore to bail out a 1600 crore fraudster involving a bank of which Shah was the director.Career
Sharma held various administrative positions during his near thirty-year career including that of District magistrate, Bhuj, Kutch and Rajkot and as municipal commissioner of Jamnagar and Bhavnagar. A 2011 article by BBC credits Sharma of being instrumental in redeveloping the Bhuj region after the devastating 2001 earthquake. He was instrumental in faster rebuilding of streets and several public gardens.Stalk-gate/Snoopgate
In 2013, Sharma had alleged that Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister of India tailed and snooped upon an architect using state machinery in 2009. He supported his allegations with audio tapes leaked by Cobrapost and Gulail.com. The tapes which are conversations between a police officer and Amit Shah, the present home minister and close aide of Modi show that every movement of the woman was tracked on the behest of some 'saheb'. The allegations were refuted and instead Sharma was accused of having doubtful personality traits.In April 2013, suspended IPS officer G.L. Singhl told Central Bureau of Investigation that he was directed multiple times by Amit Shah to tail Pradeep Sharma. He provided 267 clips of such conversations. These show that over-reaching surveillance was kept by Amit Shah the then home minister of Gujarat on architect, her family and also Sharma.
The accusations snowballed into a major controversy and embarrassment for the BJP, the current ruling party who had nominated Modi as prime ministerial candidate for 2014 Indian general elections. The Gujarat State agencies submitted in court & the BJP leaders accepted in public that snooping did happen which they said was done on behest of girl's father and with her knowledge. S.K. Saikia, the then police commissioner of Ahemdabad said in an interview that if such surveillance was legal, he should have had some paperwork for it.
Arrests and charges
2009 - First arrest
Pradeep sharma was first arrested on corruption charges by Gujarat police when he was Municipal commissioner, Bhavnagar but he later got bail. He was suspended in 2010 on corruption charges.2014
In August 2014, he filed a petition in Supreme Court for a CBI probe into cases against him but his application was rejected. He has been since slapped with multiple cases of corruption which his family allege are because of his allegations.He was arrested in October 2014 in a graft case by Anti-Corruption Bureau.