RJD president and former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav was on Tuesday convicted of illegal withdrawals of Rs 139.35 crore from the Doranda treasury, Ranchi, during the fodder scam by a Special CBI court in Ranchi, Jharkhand.
He was immediately taken into custody after special CBI judge Sudhanshu Kumar Shashi convicted him. Yadav—who has now been convicted in all five fodder scam cases in which he was named as a conspirator—was present in the courtroom on Tuesday morning as the judge read out the verdict.
Yadav, whose quantum of punishment will be announced on 21 February, is all set to get more than three years’ sentence as all the 38 other accused who were awarded three years’ sentence were released on bail by the court.
According to the provisions in the Representation of People’s Act and Article 102 of the Constitution, those sentenced for more than two years, stand disqualified as voter and cannot contest even election to the village panchayats to Parliament. Yadav’s hopes to enter Rajya Sabha in the biennial elections in April have been dashed now.
There were a total of 99 accused in the case, of which 24 were acquitted by the court today. The CBI had registered the case in the Doranda treasury scam on 16 April 1996 and produced 575 witnesses and 14 box loads of documents to prove Yadav’s involvement in the scam.
With this announcement, Yadav’s wish to go to the Rajya Sabha stands dashed as he is likely to be given a prison sentence of more than three years which will render him ineligible to contest elections under the provisions of the Representative of People’s Act.
The 73-year-old Lalu had last week stated that he wanted to contest the elections as he had nearly completed prison sentences ranging between three years and seven years in four other cases since 2013,when he was sentenced first to three years jail term in the fodder scam which was estimated to be Rs 950 crore when it was first unearthed.
The ailing Yadav had become active in the party’s affairs of late and had presided over the national executive of RJD and announced the names of candidates for 24 seats of local bodies constituencies to fill up vacancies to Bihar Vidhan Parishad before leaving for Ranchi.
Yadav was accompanied by his eldest daughter, Misa Bharti, a member of Rajya Sabha, former cabinet colleagues Abdul Bari Siddiqui and Shyam Rajak when he entered the court. In the three past cases that involved withdrawing money from Chaibasa, Deoghar and Dumka treasury, he has already been granted bail as he has already completed half of the jail term.
In the Chaibasa case, he along with 44 other accused, was awarded five years’ jail term for the Rs 37 crore scam. In the Deoghar treasury case, he was sentenced for 3.6 years along with 38 others for fraudulently withdrawing Rs 84 lakh, while in the Chaibasa treasury case, he along with 56 others, got jail term for five years for withdrawing Rs 33 crore.
He is now facing trial in another treasury scam that relates to fraudulent withdrawal from the banks treasury in Bihar. The CBI’s arguments on behalf of the last accused, Dr Shailendra Kumar, were completed on 29 January. Of the original 170 accused in the case, 55 have died, seven have become government witnesses, two have accepted the charges against them and six are absconding. Apart from Yadav, former MP Jagdish Sharma, the then Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Dhruv Bhagat, Animal Husbandry Secretary Beck Julius and Animal Husbandry Assistant Director Dr K.M. Prasad are the main accused in the case.