Sharma has no plans to rejoin force, wants to relax

S Ahmed Ali | TNN

July 13, 2013
Mumbai: Former ecounter specialist and dismissed cop Pradeep Sharma may have been acquitted in the Lakhan Bhaiya encounter case, but question marks persist over his reinstatement in the police force. Sharma himself told TOI on Friday that he does not intend to rejoin the force, as there was “a lobby against him”.
    “I have faced enough humiliation at the police station, in various jails, hospitals and court. Even if I fight a legal battle and come back, this lobby won’t allow me to work peacefully. I had enough experience of serving in the force. Now I want to relax and give time to my family.”
    Sharma said he was framed in the case by a certain IPS officer “for reasons best known to him.”
    He said on the fateful day, he was not present at the encounter site and yet the SIT arrested him. “Ballistics reports were fabricated to frame me,” Sharma said.
    Sources said even if Sharma were keen to return to the force, he faces two hurdles. First, the state had appealed against his reinstatement in the Bombay High Court.
    The other hurdle is that in the wake of SIT’s plan to appeal against his acquittal, the home department may reinstate him but give him a side posting.
    Sharma said, “I have come out clean purely on merit. But will anybody probe why I was fixed? Will they return the three and half years I spent in jail because of which my family had to suffer?”
WHO IS HE? Pradeep Sharma
was an encounter specialist who was dismissed for alleged underworld connections and arrested in the encounter case
WHY WAS HE ACQUITTED? Sources said Sharma, whom the SIT had accused of firing at Lakhan Bhaiya, was acquitted mainly on the basis of the ballistics report, which was found to be questionable