PATNA: A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Jharkhand on Thursday sentenced a former minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) lawmaker Iliyas Hussain to four year imprisonment in a 26-year-old bitumen scam involving defalcation of Rs1.8 million (about Dh94,726). Hussain is considered very close to party chief Lalu Prasad who is already in jail in connection with multimillion fodder scam.
Special CBI judge Anil Kumar Mishra also imposed a fine of Rs200,000 (about Dh10,526) on Hussain who along with two others who too were convicted by the court. The court also announced the accused persons would have to stay in jail for more time in the event of them not paying the monetary fine.
Hussain, a prominent leader from the RJD represents Dehri seat in the Bihar assembly. He has been one of the prominent minority faces of the party after Mohammad Taslimuddin who died last year.
The scam had surfaced in 1992 after which the CBI registered a case against Hussain who was then the road construction minister in the Lalu Prasad government. The scam in supply of 375 metric tons of bitumen had caused a loss of Rs1.8 million to the state exchequer, reports said.
Last year, a designated CBI court in Patna, however, had acquitted Hussain in another such case for lack of evidence. The court though sentenced a Kolkata-based transporter to four years of rigorous imprisonment in the scam involving swindling of bitumen money to the tune of Rs3.9 million (about Dh205,263). This scam had surfaced in 1994.
This is the second setback for the RJD in the past eight months. Earlier this year, RJD chief Prasad was sentenced to jail in two fodder scam cases, landing the party in trouble. Prasad is currently in Ranchi jail from where he was shifted to a local hospital for treatment of multiple ailments.
His being jailed is creating a lot of problems for the main opposition RJD in Bihar. While the ruling NDA has begun formalising the seat-sharing deal with its allies, such process has not even begun in the opposition Grand Alliance led by the RJD.
The RJD leadership is hopeful that the court will grant regular bail to Prasad in the coming days but the latter has rejected any such hope alleging the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is using its machineries to keep him and his family involved in court cases till the Lok Sabha elections are over.
