New Delhi: A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court will pronounce the quantum of sentence for Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad and others in a fodder scam case on Thursday.
The sentence was to be pronounced on Wednesday but the court postponed it due to the passing away of advocate Vindeshwari Prasad. The quantum of sentence will be significant for the former Bihar chief minister’s efforts to stitch together an anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance in Bihar ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
A special CBI court in Ranchi had convicted former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad and 15 others in the second of six fodder scam cases, on 23 December. The verdict came as a blow to both the RJD and the Congress, who had fought the 2015 Bihar assembly election in an alliance with Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) or JD(U).
The RJD-JD(U)-Congress alliance, popularly known as the “mahagathbandhan”, which defeated Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), winning 178 of the 243 seats in the election, was weakened after Kumar’s switch to the BJP in July 2017.
After the December verdict, Prasad was taken into custody to the Birsa Munda Prison in Ranchi. Special CBI court judge Shivpal Singh had acquitted six others, including former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra, in the case.
The Rs900 crore fodder scam was unravelled more than two decades ago. The conviction in this case pertains to embezzlement of more than Rs89 lakh from the Deoghar treasury between 1991 and 1994.
In 2013, Prasad was convicted in the first fodder scam case and was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment along with a fine of Rs25 lakh, by another special CBI court. After spending two months in jail, the Supreme Court granted bail to Prasad in the first fodder scam case. However, it did cost him his Lok Sabha seat.
Mishra and JD(U) leader Jagdish Sharma were also convicted in the first fodder case and were awarded four years’ imprisonment each. The first fodder case was related to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs37.70 crore from the Chaibasa district treasury when Bihar was an undivided state.