Patna: A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Saturday handed out a jail term of three-and-a-half years to former Bihar chief minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad Yadav in a multimillion dollar fodder scam case.
The court of CBI judge Shivpal Singh, who pronounced the judgement through videoconferencing, also imposed a fine of Rs500,000 (Dh28,998) on Yadav, saying his imprisonment could be extended for another six months if he fails to pay. The judgement comes 13 days after Yadav and other accused persons were convicted by the court in a 21-year-old fodder scam case relating to the fraudulent withdrawal of Rs8.45 million from a local treasury.
Legal experts say had he been awarded the jail term of three years or less than that he would have easily procured the bail. But now that his imprisonment exceeds more than that he will have to move the higher court for bail.
“Lalu Prasad has been awarded a jail term of three years and six months with a fine of Rs half million. Now we will move the higher court for bail. Will file the appeal once we get the copy of the judgement,” Yadav’s lawyer, Prabhat Kumar, told the media on Saturday.
The RJD expressed disappointment over the judgement. “This is perhaps for the first time in the country that the man who exposed the scam is being victimised. This is not fair,” RJD’s chief spokesperson, Manoj Jha, told media.
Leader of opposition in Bihar assembly, who is also Yadav’s son, Tejashwi Yadav charged the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) with hatching a conspiracy against the RJD chief and lodging him in jail for “political reasons”.
“They [NDA leaders] are hatching a series of conspiracies against Lalu Prasad to silence the voice of the poor, oppressed and the have-nots, but if they think they will succeed in their attempt by this move, they are wrong,” Tejashwi told a media conference in Patna on Saturday. He said there is anger and resentment among the masses now that the RJD president has been jailed.
Tejashwi added the ruling NDA regime began conspiring against Yadav soon after he began uniting the scattered opposition across the country. “Some 18-20 opposition parties had attended the RJD rally organised in Patna last year which terrorised the NDA. The poor show of the NDA in the just-held Gujarat assembly elections further left them in panic and they went all-out to somehow put Lalu in jail but their happiness will be short-lived,” he explained.
Another senior RJD member Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said they would very soon be undertaking a “nyay yatra” (tour for justice) across the state during they would seek justice for the incarcerated RJD president. “We will not wait for 2019 or 2020 [when the Lok Sabha and Bihar assembly elections are to be held respectively[, we will make the NDA government at the centre and in Bihar fall midway,” he declared. He said they would launching the fight against “social-economic disparity”.
The RJD president is accused in a total of six multimillion dollar fodder scam cases and this was the second case in succession where he was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment. The first judgement, which came in September 2013, destroyed his active political career. The conviction not only resulted in his instant disqualification from Parliament but also a ban on contesting elections for another decade.
The 69-year-old politician who served as the chief minister of Bihar for six years besides taking office as the federal railway minister, suffered a serious jolt in May this year when India’s top court revived the conspiracy and fraud charges against him in other fodder scam cases stating that separate trials would go in the remaining cases while quashing the 2014 Jharkhand high court’s order in this regard.
The apex court gave its verdict on May 8 on a CBI plea opposing the dropping of charges against the RJD president by the Jharkhand High Court. The CBI had moved the SC after the High Court dropped conspiracy charges against Prasad in November 2014 on the ground that “a person cannot be tried twice for the same offence”.
The apex court not only set aside the ruling of the lower court but also ordered the trial court to conclude the trail within nine months. The case took a curious turn in August this year when the RJD chief charged the trial court judge Shivpal Singh with misbehaving with one of his witnesses in the case and moved the Jharkhand High Court, seeking for transfer of the case to another court. The High Court, however, dismissed his plea finding no merit in his plea.
What is the scam about?
Yadav, 69, is a former railways minister and ex-chief minister of the eastern state of Bihar, where he enjoys huge popular support for championing lower castes.
Last month the anti-corruption court found Yadav guilty of fraudulently withdrawing nearly $140,000 (Dh514,220) from the state treasury in a larger fraud dubbed the “fodder scam”, which was worth about Rs10 billion ($157 million).
Some 60 criminal cases were filed against dozens of politicians and public officials for colluding and defrauding the government in a scheme that was meant to help livestock farmers.
They are accused of inventing vast herds of livestock to obtain public money for fodder and medicines for them.
Yadav denies the allegations, calling them a “political vendetta” by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“We are confident that he [Yadav] will get bail. We have full faith in the judiciary. We are not going to be cowed down,” Yadav’s son Tej Pratap told reporters after the sentence.
Yadav, a vocal critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was convicted in a first fodder scam case in 2013 and sentenced to five years in jail.
After spending two months in jail, he was granted bail. The conviction means he cannot contest an election and he faces at least one more case.
— AFP
