Bhuj, Feb 10: More than four decades after he assaulted Congress leader Abdul Haji Ibrahim who had raised purported harassment of innocent people by police, retired IPS officer Kuldeep Sharma was on Monday convicted by a court and sentenced to a 3-month imprisonment. Sharma was the superintendent of police of Kutch district when the incident occurred in May 1984.
The court of additional chief judicial magistrate BM Prajapati, Bhuj, also sentenced former police inspector GH Vasavada to three-month imprisonment.
The court imposed a fine of Rs 1,000 each on Sharma and Vasavada who were convicted under section 342 of the IPC for wrongfully confining Abdul Haji Ibrahim (now deceased) in his office in 1984. The trial in the four-decade-old case was expedited after the Supreme Court directed the Bhuj court to complete the proceedings within three months, the complainant’s lawyer said.
A complaint was filed in the Bhuj court by Shankar Joshi, who was part of a Congress delegation including Ibrahim, seeking action against Sharma, Vasavada, and two other accused (who are now deceased) under sections 342 (wrongful confinement), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC.
“The court held Kuldeep Sharma and Vasavada guilty under section 342 of the IPC and sentenced them to three-month jail and Rs 1,000 fine each,” Joshi’s lawyer RS Gadhvi said. As per the complaint, a delegation from Nalia town in Kutch district comprising the complainant Joshi, Ibrahim, and local MLAs, had gone to meet Sharma at the SP office in Bhuj on May 6, 1984. (PTI)
