Patna: Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has come in the firing line of the opposition a day after the Jharkhand High Court asked India’s premier investigating agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, to explain why the former (Kumar) should not be arraigned as accused in the million dollor scam along with his political aide Shivanand Tiwari, JD-U parliamentarian.

The single bench of Justice RR Prasad has also asked the CBI to furnish its reply by November 22. This is the biggest setback for Kumar ahead of the next year’s general elections. Curiously, the first judgement in the fodder scam cases in which Kumar’s political rival and Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad is an accused, is scheduled for September 30.

“Jharkhand High Court has asked CBI to file report concerning involvement of Nitish, Shivanand in fodder scam by 22 November. Don’t expect much from CBI because Congress will blackmail Nitish Kumar and bargain for alliance with JD-U in lieu of favourable report,” senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Kumar’s former deputy Sushil Kumar Modi tweeted Saturday.

Accusing the CBI of using it as a tool to extract support from the regional outfits, Modi said the sword of CBI always hanged over the head of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad. “CBI is a tool in hands of the Central government,” added Modi.

The fodder scam was a corruption scandal that involved the embezzlement of about Rs 9.5 billion from government treasury of Bihar. Among those made accused in the case include former Bihar chief ministers, Lalu Prasad and Jagannath Mishra but this is the first time in some two decades when the scam first surfaced in 1996 that the court has taken a cognizance of compliant filed against Nitish Kumar.

The court’s direction asking the CBI to file its reply came on Friday in the light of a public interest litigation filed by Mithilesh Kumar Singh, a social activist, in the Jharkhand High Court wherein he urged the court to make Kumar and Tiwari as accused in the fodder scam case saying they had allegedly been paid money by the scamsters.

Singh based his petition on the documents which he procured from the CBI using the Right to Information Act. According to him, the CBI had then claimed Shyam Bihari Sinha, the kingpin of the fodder scam case, had paid Rs14 million to Kumar for his election expenses and another Rs550,000 for his shopping at Delhi’s Cannaught Place in view of his Australia tour for which air ticket too was arranged by the accused. Citing documents, Singh further says the scamsters had also allegedly paid Rs500,000 to Tiwari for his daughter’s wedding and another Rs6.5 milion for elections purposes and added Kumar’s another aide Rajiv Ranjan alias Lalan Singh too was reportedly given three suitcases stuffed with cash though the exact amount is not known.

“The CBI has investigated only the half of the case with regard to Lalu Prasad and others while the rest half of the case is yet to be investigated. Therefore, the court should issue a direction to the CBI to make fresh investigation in the case,” asked petitioner’s lawyer Bibhuti Pandey, adding the prosecution concealed facts regarding alleged involvement of Kumar and Tiwari in the scam and presented just half truth before the court.

“The former CBI SP Javed Ahmad (now regional inspector general of CBI posted at Lucknow), in his affidavit filed before the Patna High Court too had corroborated this allegation (about the alleged involvement of Kumar and other accused in the case) but suddenly the CBI took a U-turn,” said Pandey.

It was in the light of his appeal that the court asked the CBI to file a counter-affidavit. The court also reportedly observed that when the CBI was aware of the claims by an accused that he had given money to the duo (Kumar and Tiwari), their names ought to have been included in the list of accused which, it said, was the basic concept of the criminal investigation.

The High Court direction comes four days after a special CBI court set September 30 to deliver judgment against 45 accused, including RJD chief Prasad, in the fodder scam case.