The deposition of witnesses started before a city court on Tuesday in the trial of the case related to financial irregularities at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.

Former principal of RG Medical College and Hospital Sandip Ghosh is the prime accused in the case along with four others.

All five are in judicial custody now.

A senior official of the state health department, who is posted in the rank of an officer on special duty, deposed before the Special CBI court in Alipore as the first witness in the case.

He was also cross-examined by the defence lawyer of Ghosh.

Earlier this month, charges were framed under sections of cheating, forgery, criminal breach of trust and sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The charges, if proved before the court, could lead to a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail.

Ghosh and his co-accused — Asish Pandey, a former RG Kar house-staff, Afsar Ali Khan, who was Ghosh’s guard when he was the principal, and two vendors named Sumon Hazra and Biplab Singha — have been charged in this case.

The allegations, mostly against Ghosh, range from inflated billing and granting favours to a set of vendors to run cafeterias and canteens in the hospital compound to alleged sale of unclaimed bodies and biomedical waste from the hospital.

The first complaint of financial irregularity was lodged by a former deputy superintendent of RG Kar, Akhtar Ali, following which the CBI took up the probe into the allegations.

The allegations came to the fore after Ghosh’s name emerged as a suspect for “larger conspiracy” in the rape and murder of a 31-year-old postgraduate trainee who was found dead in the seminar room of the emergency building of the hospital on August 9, last year.