MEERUT: After 26 years of investigation and a trial that saw 185 hearings, a nurse from Etah has been sentenced to a year in prison and fined Rs100 for a sterilisation racket in which she misappropriated Rs 11. She has been handed the sentence along with her accomplice, also a hospital employee, who got the same punishment.

The case, remarkable not just for the inordinately long trial but also the magnitude of the crime, began in 1989 when a sterilisation drive was conducted in Etah, UP, which covered 4,600 men and women over a year. As part of the drive, the government gave Rs 181 as incentive per person sterilized. Of this, Rs 135 was intended for the person undergoing the procedure, Rs 40 for the motivator who encouraged the person, Rs 4 for the surgeon and Rs 2 to be divided equally between the health department nurse and sweeper.

In one of the camps, 12 people were registered for sterilisation. However, the then MLA of Kasganj alleged on March 1, 1990, that medical staff at the camp had registered fake figures and appropriated the money. An enquiry was set up under the Agra vigilance department, which took an incredible seven years to find out that 11 of the 12 cases were indeed fake. The then DSP of Agra anti-corruption cell, Harveer Singh, took up the matter and an FIR was lodged at Etah on February 24, 1996, against five people — Avadh Bihari Agrawal (the then CMO of Etah), Mohanlal (lekhpal), Harish Chand (accountant), Noorjahan (nurse) and Shobharam (sweeper).

The case went for trial and, over the subsequent 26 years and more than 185 hearings, three of the accused passed away.

On Tuesday, the special anti-corruption judge at Meerut, finally gave the verdict in the case, finding Noorjahan and Shobaram guilty. “During the investigation, four cases out of 12 were found bogus while seven persons, whose names and addresses were registered in the list of sterilized people, refused to undergo the surgery,” public prosecutor Devki Nandan Sharma told TOI.