LUCKNOW, Dec. 22 -- A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Lucknow has sentenced three persons, including a senior official of the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), Ballia, to five years of rigorous imprisonment for causing a wrongful loss of over Rs.1 crore to the government exchequer under the Sampurna Grameen Rozgar Yojana (SGRY), CBI officials said on Sunday. The court, on December 20 convicted Satyendra Singh Gangwar, then chief finance and accounts officer, DRDA Ballia; Ashok Kumar Upadhyay, then junior accounts clerk, DRDA Ballia; and Raghunath Yadav, a private individual. The convicts were also fined a total of Rs.77,000. The SGRY was a flagship rural employment scheme aimed at providing wage employment and food security to rural households. According to the CBI, the case was registered on October 31, 2008, after the agency took over a 2006 case of the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) lodged at Garwar police station in Ballia district. The first information report (FIR) had named 135 accused in connection with large-scale financial irregularities in the scheme's implementation. The CBI alleged that the accused caused a loss of Rs.75.12 lakh in cash and misappropriated food grains worth Rs.31.10 lakh, cheating the government. The offence involved forgery, use of forged documents and destruction of official records to conceal the fraud. After investigation, a charge sheet was filed on June 30, 2010, leading to the conviction....