Ex-dean, 3 ex-employees of Nagpur varisty get 12 years, 6 months RI

Nagpur, Mar 1 (UNI) A special court here today sentenced a former dean of the engineering faculty of Nagpur University, former assistant registrar, and two other former employees to 12 years and six months rigorous imprisonment (RI) each, and a former student to eight years and six months of RI in a revaluation scandal of 1998.

The court also imposed fines of Rs 62,000 each on former dean, former assistant registrar and the two former employees, and a fine of Rs 42,000 on the student.

Those convicted today were H O Thakre, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the time of the scandal and now Vice Principal of Yeshwantrao Chavan College of Engineering (YCCE), controlled by Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Datta Meghe; Shyamrao Kalamkar, the then assistant registrar in the confidential section; Madhukar Smarth and Prabhakar Hejib, both of whom were scrutinisers in the University and Rajendra Yadav, who was the beneficiary student.

The sentences were handed down by Special Judge A S Gattani, who is hearing a bunch of cases pertaining to the revaluation scam and fake mark lists and degrees scandal that rocked Nagpur University several years ago.

The court sentenced Thakre, Kalamkar, Smarth and Hejib each to RI of four years and imposed a fine of Rs 20,000 under section 420 (cheating), three years and Rs 15,000 under section 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), one year and Rs 5,000 under section 471 (using as genuine a forged document), six months and Rs 2,000 under section 120B (criminal conspiracy), and four years and Rs 20,000 under section 409 (criminal breach of trust by a public servant) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). It has sentenced Yadav to identical punishments except under section 409 because he was not a 'public servant' at the pertinent time.

According to the prosecution, Yadav had failed in the Physics subject in Bachelor of Engineering (BE) Part I examination of winter 1998, having scored 21 out of 80 marks in the theory paper and 14 out of 20 in the practical. During revaluation, the records were tampered with to increase his marks in the theory paper from 21 to 29, thus giving him an aggregate score of 43 out of 100, sufficient to pass, the prosecution said. The records were tampered by Smarth and Hejib in connivance with Kalamkar, at the behest of Thakre, it said.

The prosecution said Thakre had sent a note in his handwriting to the employees to get Yadav's marks increased. Thakre's note was seized from Kalamkar's residence later.

This is the fifth case related to the revaluation scam and fake mark lists and degrees scandal to be decided by the special court.

Hejib and Smarth have been convicted in similar cases earlier.

UNI