Lalu jailed in 2nd fodder scam case
ranchi — In a huge setback to the RJD, its supremo Lalu Prasad was on Saturday sentenced to threeand-a-half-years jail in a fodder scam case.
After three days of arguments on the quantum of punishment, special CBI judge Shivpal Singh pronounced the order through video conferencing.
As the CBI judge was delivering the sentence, Lalu Prasad, who is at present lodged in the Central Jail here, was standing with folded hands.
The court also slapped two fines of Rs500,000 each on the former Bihar chief minister. If the fine is not deposited, he will have to stay in jail for another six months.
The court convicted Lalu Prasad and 15 others on December 23 in the case relating to the multi-million-rupee scam.
Lalu Prasad was sentenced to three-and-a-half years imprisonment on offences of cheating, along with criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
He was also sentenced to the same period under the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA). Both punishment will go simultaneously.
The sentences range from threeand-a-half-years to seven years imprisonment. The maximum fine imposed was Rs1 million, slapped on three convicts including Jagdish Sharma, former Public Accounts Committee chairman, while they and three others got the seven years in jail too. The remaining nine were also sentenced to three and half years in jail.
The arguments on quantum of sentence had been going on since Thursday when those of five convicts were heard and another five, including Lalu Prasad, was heard on Friday.
While hearing arguments of quantum of sentence, the judge observed that the convicts “should be kept in open jail as they have experience in looking after cows”.
The CBI court had acquitted another former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra and five others in the case, relating to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs8.45 million from the Deoghar district treasury between 1990 and 1994 in then undivided Bihar.
Lalu Prasad was the chief minister of the undivided state from 1990 to 1997. Convicted in another fodder scam case in 2013, he was sentenced to five years imprisonment and is on bail.
He was facing a total five cases in the fodder scam and the judgment in two more cases are likely to be pronounced within one month.
The multi-million-fodder scam surfaced in 1996 and at directive of Patna High Court, the investigation was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). When Lalu Prasad moved the Supreme Court against high court order, the SC ordered the Patna High Court to monitor the investigation. —