Bhubaneswar: A local court in Orissa sentenced three policemen, including a senior officer, to one year rigorous imprisonment each for misappropriating funds meant to buy radio signal equipment for the Chandipur missile test range.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs.3,000 each, the non payment of which would invoke a rigorous imprisonment of three months, the public prosecutor said.

Suresh Kumar Patnaik, Additional Judicial Magistrate (Special) at Cuttack, passed the jail sentence on Tapan Kumar Behera, former superintendent of police (Signal), Bhaskar Chandra Diabagh (accountant) and Kailash Chandra Mohanty (head clerk), after they failed to justify how they had utilised of government money worth of Rs.36,000.

Behera, of the state police service cadre, is superintendent of police (Computer) in the state crime records bureau in Bhubaneswar. He had received to the tune Rs.47,430 to purchase radio signal equipments for the Integrated Test Range of Chandipur in Balasore in 1989-1990, according to public prosecutor Hemanta Kumar Jena.

The money was also supposed to be spent to alert people to vacate villages near the test range during missile testing. He further added.

But Behera failed to provide a certificate to show how the money was spent despite repeated requests from the district administration, which had given the money in two bank drafts.

In 1992 the Balasore additional district magistrate had filed a case with the local police seeking a probe into the whereabouts of the money.