The Supreme Court will hear a plea against Lalu Prasad Yadav in the fodder scam case on Wednesday. It has issued a notice to Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo and former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav in connection with the embezzlement of about ₹9.4 billion from the government treasury of Bihar.
A plea has been filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the apex court against dropping of conspiracy charge against him by the Jharkhand High Court in one of the fodder scam cases.
CBI filed the latest appeal against the Jharkhand High Court order upholding the agency’s plea to continue proceedings in the trial court against Prasad under two sections, while dropping other charges on ‘double jeopardy’ grounds, i.e that a person cannot be tried twice for the same offence.
Earlier, the High Court had ordered continuation of proceedings against him under IPC sections 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of an offence committed or giving false information) and 511 (attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or imprisonment, and in such attempt doing any act towards the commission of the offence).
The charges are in connection with the case are related with the withdrawal of ₹96 lakh during the chief ministerial tenure of Lalu Yadav.
During his tenure, around 1,000 crore rupees were withdrawn by the Animal Husbandry department from various districts. Also, on October 3, 2013, Lalu was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in another case of fodder scam by a special CBI court, which had disqualified him from membership of Parliament and also rendered him ineligible for contesting elections for 11 years.
Besides Lalu, six other politicians and four retired IAS officers were also sentenced to prison terms for fraudulent withdrawal of ₹37.7 crore from Chaibasa treasury (now in Jharkhand) when Lalu was heading the Janta Dal government in the early 1990s in Bihar.
