Snoopgate: SC adjourns hearing on Pradeep Sharma's plea till August
Sharma had alleged that Gujarat government was acting in a discriminatory manner
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday adjourned hearing on suspended IAS officer Pradeep Sharma's plea on snoopgate and posted it for hearing in the second week of August.
The apex court, which had on January 17 rejected Sharma's plea from going abroad, dismissed a similar application which has been pending before it.
A bench headed by Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai adjourned the hearing, saying that she did not go through the contents of the sealed envelope filed before it and matter also needs to be discussed with his brother judge Justice N V Ramama.
Sharma, a 1984 batch IAS officer, had in 2011 filed the petition for handing over the cases against him to CBI and in November 2013, he raised the snoopgate issue before the apex court. He had alleged that the Gujarat government was acting in a discriminatory manner against him.
Countering the allegation levelled by Sharma, the state government had said that it came to know about several facts regarding large-scale suspicious financial transactions, amassing of benami properties by him and about his illicit relationship after his phones were kept under surveillance in 2009.
The snooping controversy broke out when two news portals released CDs of purported telephonic conversations between Modi's aide Amit Shah, who was then state Home Minister, and two top state police officials relating to snooping on a woman in 2009.
The conversations, purportedly between August and September 2009, do not specifically mention Modi by name but refers to a 'saheb', which the portals claimed was the Gujarat Chief Minister at whose instance the snooping was done, a charge denied by Shah.