Ranchi: After the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief and former railway minister was convicted in second fodder scam earlier this month. The special CBI court has yet again on Wednesday convicted the RJD chief in third fodder scam case and has sentenced him to five years in prison.
RJD president Lalu Prasad arrives at a CBI court in Ranchi in connection with a fodder scam case.
Former Bihar CM and Lalu Prasad Yadav’s aide Jagannath Mishra too was handed down a five-year jail sentence. Both leaders have to pay a fine of Rs 5 lakh each. Earlier in the day, Prasad and Mishra were convicted in the case.
Today’s verdict was delivered in a case related to the Chaibasa treasury case — RC 68(A)/96 — in which Rs 33.13 crore were fraudulently withdrawn against the annual allotment of Rs 7.10 lakh for the year 1992-93, reads the quote from a report published in an English daily.
“People know how the BJP and RSS and more importantly Nitish Kumar have conspired against Lalu ji. We will approach higher courts against all these verdicts,” Lalu Yadav’s son and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav said while interacting with the media persons.
It is reported by the media sources that the third fodder scam involved 56 accused, out of which six were acquitted by the court. As many as 76 accused were booked out of which 14 died during the trial, three became approvers , two pleaded guilty and one is absconding.
Lalu Yadav has already been convicted in two other fodder scam cases and sentenced to five and three-and-half years of imprisonment respectively.
In the first fodder scam case in which Prasad was convicted, the court had sentenced him to five years in prison in 2013, following which the RJD chief spent 70 days in a Ranchi jail before he getting a bail. This was a major set back for him as he was disqualified from both contesting future elections and from his membership of Parliament.
The Rs 900 crore fodder scam, probed by the CBI, relates to fraudulent withdrawal of public funds from different government treasuries over fictitious spends on fodder and other expenses for cattle, Hindustan Times (HT) notes in its report.