Lalu Prasad Yadav sentenced 3.5 years in jail Fodder Scam

Former chief minister of Bihar Lalu Prasad Yadav has been sentenced to 3 ½ years in jail and a fine of Rs 5 lakhs in a case related to fodder scam.

A special CBI court, hearing the case, delivered the verdict in Ranchi, Jharkhand, on Saturday. Altogether there are 15 convicts, including Lalu, in the Rs 950-crore scandal of mid-1990s when he was the chief minister of one of the most impoverished states in the country. Among the convicts, seven others — Phool Chand, Mahesh Prasad, Bake Julious, Sunil Kumar, Sushil Kumar, Sudhir Kumar and Raja Ram — were also sentenced to the same jail term and fine as Lalu.

Though Lalu’s legal team said it would seek bail for Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo from the Jharkand High Court, such possibility has been ruled out as the jail sentence is more than three years.
Moreover, there are six cases linked to the scam and Saturday’s verdict related to only one of them. That is, the fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 89.27 lakh from Deoghar Treasury between 1991 and 1994 when Lalu was the chief minister.

Lalu was convicted by the same court on December 23 last year and has been in Birsa Munda prison since then. Earlier, RJD leaders and Lalu’s lawyers had appealed for leniency in sentencing him, citing his poor health.

Bihar’s fodder scam is notorious for its brazenness and the way political leaders of that time had hoodwinked the law. In a nutshell, crores of rupees had been siphoned off from the state treasury to non-existent fictitious companies specially floated for that purpose to supply fodder for cattle. While no animal got any feed, the misappropriated money went to feed the greed of the high and the mighty in Bihar.