Five people allegedly involved in the attack on Fang Zhouzi, a famous science writer known for his efforts in exposing academic fraud, were sentenced to months in detention by a Beijing court Sunday.

Fang Zhouzi[File photo]

Xiao Chuanguo, the behind the scenes plotter, along with four hired attackers, were charged with the crime of "creating disturbance and thus undermining the social order" at the Shijingshan District People's Court.

Xiao was sentenced to five and a half months in detention while the four others were sentenced to detentions ranging from five and a half months to one and a half months, the court ruled after a half-day trial.

Only Xiao appealed to the verdict, the court said.

The court found Xiao, 55, head of the Urology Department of Wuhan Union Hospital, hired the attackers to take revenge on two writers as he believed their revelations of his academic frauds led to him failing to become a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, police in Beijing said last month after they arrested him at the Shanghai Pudong airport on September 21.

The attackers disabled Fang with pepper spray, then hit him with a hammer on a street near his home on August 29. Fang suffered slight injuries in the attack, the court said. They were also accused of being responsible for another attack on Fang Xuanchang, an editor of the financial journal Caijing, on June 24.

Fang Zhouzi was born in Fujian Province in 1967. He is well known for exposing bogus research and academic fraud in China.