Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Feb 21: The former Bihar chief minister and the Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav was on Monday sentenced to five years jail and a fine of Rs 60 lakhs by a special CBI court in Ranchi in the fifth case linked with fodder scam.
The case in which Lalu Prasad was pronounced guilty along with 39 others and acquitted 24 accused on February 15 by the special CBI judge SK Sashi, pertained to the illegal withdrawal of Rs 139.35 crore from the Doranda treasury of Ranchi in 1995-96. He had reserved the order on the quantum of punishment which was delivered on Monday.
The court had pronounced three years jail term to other 35 convicts in the case on February 15 and fined them in the range of Rs 20,000 to Rs 2 lakh. The sentencing of 41 accused, including Lalu Prasad was awarded Monday through video conferencing.
The three-time chief minister Lalu Prasad had already been convicted in the previous four cases. One more case is pending before CBI Patna, pertaining to illegal withdrawal of money from the Banka-Bhagalpur treasury.
One of the defence lawyers, Anant Kumar Vij said: “The judge pronounced five years of jail term, of which he has already undergone three years and nineteen days. Since he has already undergone half of the jail term, we will file a petition in the high court to grant him bail.”
According to the court records, the charge in this case was framed against the accused persons on September 26, 2005 and the prosecution evidence was closed on May 16, 2019. The statements of accused persons were recorded on January 16, 2020 and the conviction happened February 15, 2022.
The RJD chief was convicted in the first fodder scam case in 2013 and awarded five years in jail related to Chaibasa illegal withdrawal of cases. The conviction also barred him from contesting elections for 11 years, in line with the Supreme Court order disqualifying convicts jailed for more than two years from contesting for six years after completion of their sentence.
Later, he got bail in the case. Lalu was convicted by a special CBI court in the second case on December 23, 2017 for the illegal withdrawal of more than Rs 80 lakh from the Deoghar treasury and awarded three-and-half years’ imprisonment. He was convicted in the third case on January 24, 2018 related to fraudulent withdrawals from the Chaibasa treasury worth Rs 33.67 crore and awarded a five-year jail term. In the fourth case, concerning illegal withdrawal of Rs 3.13 crore from the Dumka treasury, Lalu was awarded seven years’ imprisonment in March 2018.
A former Union minister, the 74-year-old Lalu Prasad is currently on bail and is admitted in the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi for treatment of multiple diseases. He was virtually present in the court on Monday while the sentence was pronounced by the judge.
The court completed hearing arguments in the case on January 29. Apart from Prasad, former Bihar MP Jagdish Sharma, then Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Dhruv Bhagat, AHD secretary Beck Julius and AHD director K M Prasad and others were the other accused persons in the case.
The ₹950-crore fodder scam had come to light in January 1996 in undivided Bihar. It was related with fraudulent withdrawal of public money from government treasuries of various districts. Prasad has been in the Birsa Munda central jail in Ranchi since December 2017 in different fodder scam cases and he was granted bail in April 2021. He was also admitted in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) New Delhi. Recently, he had gone Ranchi to physically appear in court in the Doranda treasury case but was admitted again to the RIMS. The RJD leaders said they have full faith in the judiciary and would go to the Ranchi High Court for appeal in the case.
“I fight those who create divides. They can’t defeat us so they try to trap us in conspiracies. I have neither been afraid, nor bent before anyone. I will keep fighting. The coward will never understand the struggles of a fighter,” Lalu Yadav tweeted in Hindi.
On February 15, after he was held guilty in the fifth case of the fodder scam, Prasad was taken to the jail hospital in Ranchi. He may be released soon as he has already spent over three and half years in jail. The fodder scam involved large-scale corruption in which funds meant for animal fodder were embezzled from multiple government treasuries across Bihar. The Animal Husbandry Department allegedly issued fake bills to facilitate the scam.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, asked about Lalu Yadav’s sentence, disassociated himself from the case. “When the case was filed, they came to me also. Some of those who did file cases are with him today,” Nitish Kumar said. Lalu Yadav has challenged his conviction in four cases.
Prasad’s son Tejashwi Yadav, considered his political heir, regretted the “harassment” to his father. “We had the mandate to rule in the 2020 Bihar election but they (BJP and Nitish Kumar) made a backdoor entry and took power. The same person is being harassed over and over,” he said.