Gujarat: CAT quashes charge sheet against ex-IPS officer

In a blow to Gujarat government, the Ahmedabad bench of Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) today quashed the charge sheet against former IPS officer Rahul Sharma for not returning a CD of call records of 2002 post-Godhra riots period.
"The charge sheet is tainted with mischief, malafied, and malice..Coloured by arbitrariness, illegality and...Designed as an engine of oppression," stated the order.
It was invalid under Commission of Inquiry Act, said the order passed by CAT's judicial member K B Suresh.
Sharma approached CAT in August 2011 seeking to set aside the charge sheet issued by Gujarat government (then headed by Narendra Modi) accusing him of not submitting the original CD of phone call records of politicians and bureaucrats during the post-Godhra riots of 2002.

Sharma, posted in the city control room between March 24, 2002 to July 3, 2002, had assisted the crime branch in the investigation of riot cases and had put together a CD of mobile phone call records of ministers, police officers and bureaucrats between February 2002 and March 2002.
In 2004 he handed over the CD to Justice Nanavati Commission, set up by the state government to probe the riots, as evidence.

The charge sheet said he had taken away the original CD without authority and handing it over to the Commission.
Sharma argued that he was being persecuted because he deposed before the Nanavati commission, and under Commission of Inquiry Act, no action can be taken against any officer for deposing before an inquiry commission.

He took voluntary retirement last year and started practising as a lawyer.