PatnaA special CBI court on Saturday sentenced Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav to three and a half years in jail and imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh after finding him guilty in a 21-year-old fodder scam case. The court had convicted Yadav on 23 December, and announced the quantum of punishment two weeks later.
Yadav had earlier sought minimum punishment, citing ill health and stating that he suffers from diabetes and has had a heart surgery as well.
The court had convicted Yadav for offences of cheating with criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Prevention of Corruption Act. The case against Yadav and 10 others pertains to the withdrawal of Rs 89.27 lakh from the Deogarh Treasury between 1990 and 1994, when he was chief minister of Bihar.
Earlier, he was awarded five years imprisonment in 2013 in a case relating to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 33.61 crore from the Chaibasa treasury. The RJD supremo was later granted bail by the Supreme Court.
Yadav still faces another three fodder scam cases pertaining to illegal withdrawal of Rs 3.97 crore from the Dumka treasury, Rs 36 crore from the Chaibasa treasury and Rs 184 crore from the Doranda treasury.
Besides Yadav, the court also heard arguments over RJD leader RK Rana, former IAS officers Phoolchand Singh, Mahesh Prasad, former government official Subir Bhattacharya, and suppliers/transporters Tripurari Mohan Prasad, Sushil Kumar Sinha, Sunil Kumar Sinha, Raja Ram Joshi, Sanjay Agarwal and Sunil Gandhi.
The court had heard pre-sentencing arguments in alphabetical order against former IAS officer Beck Julius, Gopinath Das, RJD leader Jagdish Sharma, and transporter/suppliers Jyoti Kumar Jha and Krishna Kumar Prasad on Thursday. It then deferred announcing the punishment.
On 23 December, the court had convicted all 16 accused in the fodder scam while acquitting six others, including former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra.
In 1996, the Patna High Court had ordered an inquiry into the fodder scam cases and a chargesheet in the Deogarh treasury case was filed against 38 people on 27 October, 1997. Eleven of them have since died and three turned approvers, while two other accused confessed and were convicted in 2006-07, a CBI official said.
On 30 September, 2013, Yadav, Jagannath Mishra and several others had been convicted in another case pertaining to illegal withdrawal of Rs 37.7 crore from Chaibasa treasury in the early 1990s. The conviction on 23 December last is the second in the scam.
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