Patna: The trial in the 2016 Intermediate topper scam involving former chairman of the Bihar School Examination Board Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh and his lawmaker wife Usha Sinha began with framing of charges in the special vigilance court on Wednesday.

Special vigilance judge-I Madhukar Kumar told 31 out of the 41 accused in the case of the charges levelled against them. The accused, who were present in the court, however, denied the allegations and told the court that they were being framed in a false case.

Junior public prosecutor of the vigilance Anandi Singh said relevant documents were provided to the 31 accused, who were present in the court on Wednesday. The framing of charges of the remaining accused would be done on the next date of hearing, he added.

The court has fixed February 7 as the next date of hearing. All the remaining accused have been directed to remain present in court. Four of them were the four examinees, whose results were later cancelled by the examination board.

Anandi said that among the 41 accused, 22 were public servants, who were currently on bail. The chargesheet was filed in the court by a special investigation team of Patna police on September 5, 2017, nearly 88 days after the first information report (FIR) was lodged with the Kotwali police station in Patna.

The SIT headed by then additional superintendent of police Rakesh Kumar was assigned to probe the case.

The scam surfaced when one of the toppers in humanities stream Shalini Rai pronounced political science as prodigal science during an interview with a local media. She had appeared in the examination from VR College at Kiratpur near Bhagwanpur in Vaishali district.

The matter snowballed into a major controversy, which forced the state government to order a probe. An FIR was lodged with the Kotwali police station after the intervention of Nitish Kumar, who later removed Lalkeshwar from the post of chairman of the board.

On June 6, 2016, a formal complaint was lodged by the then director of high secondary education Rajiv Prasad Singh. Later, an SIT was formed by the Patna senior superintendent of police Manu Maharaaj to investigate the case. The director-cum-principal of VR College, Amit Kumar, alias Bachcha Rai was also arrested.

Vinod Kumar Verma, who appeared on behalf of the accused, said the court will start examining the prosecution witnesses after framing of the charges.