A Special CBI court at Ranchi to pronounced the fodder scam verdict case having Bihar former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav as accused along with 20 others. Court found him guilty in one of the four pending fodder scam cases.
The quantum of punishment will be pronounced on January 3. Former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra found innocent by the trial court. Acquitted in Fodder Scam.
A Detailed Judgment will be published here soon. Keep updated.
Before Judgement
“We trust and respect the judiciary. We will not let BJP’s conspiracies work, Jaisa 2G mein hua, Ashok Chavan ka hua, vaisa hi humara bhi hoga,” Prasad told news agency ANI. He also claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governments since the time of Atal Bihari Vajpayee have been harassing him and his family by misusing the CBI for the past 25 years.
Scam in Brief:
The fodder scam started with small-scale embezzlement done by low level government employees to show transfer of some fake funds. When it grew, it also started to include businesses and politicians, increasing the amount of money embezzled. The then CAG, TN Chaturvedi, noticed delays in submissions of monthly accounts of the Bihar treasury and warned of possible laundering of funds in 1985. The Animal Husbandry department had made fraudulent withdrawals of big bills of Rs 1,000 crore in the name of medicines during the chief ministerial tenure of Lalu Yadav. However, the raid only happened in 1996.
The Patna High Court directed CBI to investigate the scam. As the investigation progressed, the CBI formally requested the then Governor of Bihar for permission to prosecute the CM. In June 1997, the CBI filed chargesheets against Lalu Yadav and 55 other co-accused. The accused had 63 cases registered against them under three sections: IPC Sections 420 (forgery) and 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy) and Section 13 (b) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The Supreme Court in May ordered a trial against Lalu Prasad, and directed that it be complete within 9 months, after it allowed a CBI plea which opposed the dropping of charges against the former chief minister.
Read the Supreme Order here:
[embeddoc url=”http://legaldesire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/CBI-v-Lalu-SC.pdf” download=”all” text=”Download the Order”]
