Ahmedabad: A case against a retired IPS officer which pertains to an incident in 1984 is raising eyebrows. An arrest warrant has now been issued against Kuldeep Sharma, known to be a vocal critic of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), particularly of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah.Kuldeep Sharma has been accused of assaulting a Congress leader at the time. The former DIG of Gujarat had earlier accused current Union home minister and then Gujarat’s junior home minister, Shah, of accepting a bribe of Rs 2.5 crore to help bail out Ketan Parekh, who was involved in a Rs 1,600-crore bank scam in 2005. The bank in question was a Gujarat-based cooperative bank, and Shah was one of its directors.Kuldeep Sharma, who was then additional DGP in the CID department, was hounded out of the police force after he began looking into the bribery allegations against Shah. He was transferred to the Gujarat State Sheep and Wool Development Department, where he became the first IPS officer, after 31 IAS officers, to serve as the department’s managing director.Kuldeep Sharma is the brother of IAS officer Pradeep Sharma, who joined the Gujarat Administrative Service in 1981 as a deputy collector and was nominated to the IAS in 1999 at the seniority level of the 1994 cadre. He has served as municipal commissioner of Jamnagar and Bhavnagar and as collector of Kutch-Bhuj and Rajkot until his suspension in 2010. Pradeep Sharma had retired from service in 2015, five years after first being apprehended on corruption charges.Pradeep Sharma was the Kutch collector post the 2001 earthquake and had earned the then chief minister Modi’s trust for various rehabilitation works. However, they fell apart and later Pradeep Sharma alleged that he was being hounded because he was aware of snooping on a young woman architect in Kutch, allegedly at the behest of Modi. He had even demanded a CBI inquiry against Modi for the alleged snooping. Pradeep Sharma claimed that he had introduced the architect to Modi when he was the collector in Kutch. The retired IAS officer faces 15 criminal cases related to alleged illegal land acquisition, bribery and money laundering. He has spent close to six years in jail now. Earlier this year, a court in Kutch sentenced Pradeep Sharma to five years of rigorous imprisonment in connection with a 2011 case involving irregularities in the allotment of government land to a private company in Kutch in 2003-04.A sessions court in Kutch has now issued a non-bailable warrant against Kuldeep Sharma and retired deputy superintendent of police Girish Vasavada.In 2015, after Pradeep Sharma’s arrest and Modi’s elevation to prime minister, Kuldeep Sharma had joined the Congress. Ironically, he may now face jail time in a 41-year-old case in which he is accused of unlawful confinement of a Congress leader.In May 1984, a group of local residents had approached Kuldeep Sharma with a representation concerning alleged harassment linked to an investigation in a case registered in Naliya. Among them were local leaders, including MLA Kharashankar Joshi and Congress leader Haji Abdulla Haji Ibrahim, also known as Ibla Sheth, who has since died.The complainant, Shankar Joshi, alleged that upon realising Sheth’s presence, Kuldeep Sharma reprimanded the MLA for bringing along a “smuggler”. According to reports, Kuldeep Sharma then took Sheth to an adjoining room, where he was beaten by Vasavada and two other police officers, both of whom have since died.Much water has flowed down the Sabarmati since then. Following Joshi’s complaint, a magistrate’s court in Kutch convicted Kuldeep Sharma and Vasavada in February this year. They were sentenced to three months in prison. The charges included wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation and voluntarily causing hurt, but the conviction was limited to wrongful confinement.The two officers appealed the conviction before a sessions court, which upheld the lower court’s decision on September 24. According to Joshi’s advocate, R.S. Gadhvi, the sessions court also granted a 15-day stay on the order to allow the convicts to approach the high court.Gadhvi has been quoted as having said, “The court issued a non-bailable warrant against the two accused on the basis of an application we filed, as the order was stayed for 15 days and they have not obtained any further stay from the high court.”Senior advocate I.H. Syed, representing Kuldeep Sharma, said, “We have moved a revision application before the Gujarat high court against the sessions court order [confirming the conviction of Sharma and Vasavada]. We have also filed applications seeking exemption from surrendering, as well as suspension of sentence and bail. The court has reserved its judgment. The non-bailable warrant will be challenged.”Kuldeep Sharma, who joined the IPS in 1976, had also come under scrutiny during his tenure as head of the state CID for his alleged involvement in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.Separately, Kuldeep Sharma was also named in another case related to an alleged fake encounter, following an application by Kutch resident Jusab Juma Mokha. Mokha claimed that five members of his family were killed by police in 1984 while Kuldeep Sharma was serving as SP in Kutch. In August 2010, the Gujarat high court quashed the FIR against him in that case.In September 2015, nearly a year after his retirement, Kuldeep Sharma joined the Congress party. He and his brother, suspended IAS officer Pradeep Sharma, have long been at odds with the Gujarat government.Deepal Trivedi is the CEO and founder editor of www.vibesofindia.com.