Snoopgate: Gujarat government acted in discriminatory manner says Pradeep Sharma

“That the Petitioner herein is a witness to the text messages (SMS) exchanged between the lady architect and Respondent No. 3 and it was through this exchange that the Petitioner noted the details of the phone number which is in fact registered in the name of Reliance Industries, and was being used by Respondent No. 3 for his own personal use,” Sharma said in his rejoinder affidavit to the state governments affidavit filed on April 1.  

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.

The state government had filed its response on a petition filed by Sharma seeking CBI probe in snoopgate controversy.  

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 took the controversy over the snoopgate to the apex court.

Countering the allegation levelled by Sharma, the state government had said that it came to know 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 court had earlier refused Sharma's plea to allow him to travel to the United States to meet his wife and son, who are American citizens.