Gujarat surveillance controversy: Suspended IAS officer Pradeep Sharma speaks on TV

By Dilip -
Suspended IAS officer Pradeep Sharma has moved a notice in the Supreme Court asking for the CBI to probe into the tapes which allegedly showed Gujarat government used state police to conduct surveillance on a woman. Here is the complete transcript of the conversation between Bhupendra Chaubey for CNN-IBN and Pradeep Sharma, the bureaucrat involved with the snooping controversy featuring Amit Shah and, possibly, the BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi:
CNN-IBN: Hello and welcome to the CNN-IBN Special. Over the last couple of weeks, there have been several questions and allegations levelled against the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his key aide Amit Shah in the snooping controversy. Supporters of Modi and Amit Shah say that he is a victim and that he is not a culprit. With me is the man who perhaps has some of the answers and who can help us understand what exactly is happening in the state of Gujarat as far as the snooping row is ocncerned and as far as the credentials of the girl who was referred to as Mansi are concerned. Pradeep Sharma, a senior officer from Gujarat. Someone who has been to jail as well because there were some serious allegations levelled against you. Thank you very much for joining us, Pradeep Sharma. Let me begin by asking: it is being said that this girl Mansi was in a relationship with you and the reason that you were sent to jail is because the girl's parents complaints against you to the Gujarat CM.
Pradeep Sharma: First of all I am not going to name anyone in this interview. There was a relationship that was absolutely professional in nature. The architect was engaged by us to develop Tehelgani. She completed the job, we developed a friendship. When I say we developed a friendship, I mean the family of the architect and myself developed a friendship. We kept on interacting regularly and that's about it. So all these allegations about my having a relationship with her are absolutely wrong.
CNN-IBN: The BJP spokespersons have been saying that there was a complaint against you by the girl's parents to the Gujarat Chief Minister, that you were harrassing the girl.
Sharma: I will kill this story by making only one statement. The day I was arrested and taken to police custody, the 6th of January, 2010, my first meal, my first dinner, was brought by the parents of the architect. If I was a threat they would not have brought food for me and made me talk to the architect on the phone. She spoke to me and she said she was very upset about what the CM had done and she was going to take it up. But I told her she need not do anything. This was my battle and I would take it up.
CNN-IBN: You were the Collector in the Kutch region, you were going about discharging your duties, you had a clean record, no blemishes for the first few months. What suddenly happened for you to be looked at as a threat to the honesty mechanism that was at work in the state? Many felt that you were indulging in acts of corruption. What went wrong for Pradeep Sharma?
Sharma: There were no allegations against me until 2010. I don't know where these cases of corruption have come from. Even in the cases filed against me, not a single case of corruption has been filed except the case of the mobile phone, which is a wrong charge because time and again I have been paying money to whoever... You should be aware of one thing. Nobody in Gujarat has just one mobile phone. All officers have different phones under different names because everyone knows that the government is snooping. I had different phones too.
CNN-IBN: So you were worried that perhaps your phone was being tapped and conversations were being listened to.
Sharma: I realised that phones were being tapped only in 2008, when I was moved out of Rajkhot. Coming back to your question, you said they had a perception that I was a corrupt, inefficient blah blah... Mr Modi is an efficient Chief Minister. Would he have posted an inefficient, corrupt man as Municipal Commissioner of Jamnagar, and followed this with posts like Collector Kutch, Collector Rajkot, which is one of the largest districts in the state, and Municipal Commissioner, Bhavnagar?

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