A special CBI court on Monday sentenced the key conspirator of infamous Rs 3000 crore Vyapam scam related to rigging the recruitment of police constable in Madhya Pradesh to 10 years in jail and 30 others to seven years in prison.

The conviction in the case was announced in November 21 and the quantum of sentence was reserved for Monday. Out of these 31 convicted, 12 were examinees, 12 fake candidates and seven middlemen.

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The court of Special Judge SB Sahu had ordered the arrest of all the accused in the case, and it is the first time that such a large number of people have been sentenced to such a long terms in the Vyapam scam.

This judgment relates to 14^th case out of 150 cases related to the Vyapam scam. This is the first time that the court has convicted all the accused.

Sentences are based on the statements of 90 witrnesses and 450 documents of evidence. The Special Task Force (STF) had registered a case under Sections 420, 419 and 120B of the Indian Penal Code against the accused.

CBI Special Public Prosecutor Satish Dinkar said the examination for police constables was conducted by the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board, popularly known as Vyapam, on September 15, 2013.

31 accused were arrested in Bhopal and Datia centres after complaint of irregularities was registered. The case was handed over from STF to CBI on the orders of Supreme Court.

In the case, six candidates were arrested from Datia and six from Bhopal while 12 other people who were taking exam in their place were arrested. This led to the the arrest of middlemen involved in the scam.

The maximum sentence of 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment (RI) and a fine of Rs 5,000 was handed to Pradeep Kumar Tyagi, the middleman and key conspirator who organised the imposters for original candidates. The others have been sentenced to seven years’ RI and fines varying from Rs 1,000 to Rs 3,000.

The Special Public Prosecutor said that the guilty candidates had made a plan to get solvers to take the examination in their place while filling the form. They had affixed blurred photographs in the examination form so that the invigilators do not recognise the solvers. But many invigilators matched the photos with the examinees and caught the candidates.

The CBI had registered 170 FIRs in the Vyapam scam. Of these, 143 have been charge-sheeted. Investigations have been closed in 20 cases, including 16 cases of suspected deaths. In seven cases, the probe is going on.

The CBI has been investigating the scam since July 2015. There are more than 2,500 accused in cases related to the scam.

The 31 who were convicted on Sunday are: Rahul Pandey, Ashish Kumar Pandey, Kulvijay, Abhishek Katiyar, Suyyesh Saxena, Prabhakar Sharma, Pradeep Kumar Tyagi, Neeraj alias Tinku, Anil Yadav, Ajay Sankarwar, Dharamesh Sahu, Phoolkunwar, Devendra Sahu, Ajit Chaudhary, Bhupendra Singh Tomar, Santosh Sharma , Chandrapal Kashyap, Punjab Sahu, Ravi Shankar, Naavis Jatav, Mukesh Sahu, Arun Gurjar, Udaybhan Sahu, Danish Dhakad, Antanadar Sahu, Prithvendra Sahu Tomar, Sudeep Sharma, Ajay P Tapu Sahu, Kalyani Sahu Sikarwar, Gulvir Singh Jat and Rajvir Singh alias Bunty.

(With inputs from IANS)