New Delhi, Jun 22 (IANS): Three former Indian Railways senior engineers based in Kerala along with a contractor were last week fined Rs 18 lakh and sentenced to a one year jail term each by a CBI court in a 17-year-old cheating case.

The case was registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2003 on allegations against these employees of causing a loss of Rs 18 lakh to Southern Railway in construction of vertical piles.

The Special CBI court in Ernakulam (Kerala) convicted the three engineers of Southern Railway and the contractor on June 16.

Then Deputy Chief Engineer S.K. Bansal and then Executive Engineer S.K. Agarwal were sentenced to one year simple imprisonment with a fine of Rs 7 lakh each.

Then Executive Engineer C.K. Varghese was sentenced to undergo one year simple imprisonment with a fine of Rs 3 lakh.

The court also sentenced contractor Sajeev Mathew to one year simple imprisonment with a fine of Rs 14 lakh.

The agency had registered the case on the allegations that the accused entered into a criminal conspiracy to cheat Southern Railway in the construction of vertical sand piles.

In pursuance of the conspiracy, the accused prepared false and forged documents, processed them and passed the inflated bills of the contractor causing an alleged loss of Rs 18.5 lakh to Southern Railway. After investigation, the CBI filed a chargesheet.

The trial court found the accused guilty and convicted them.