CBI court to determine Lalu Yadav's fate in fodder scam case; RJD chief hopes for clean chit

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RANCHI: The fate of former Bihar chief ministers Lalu Prasad Yadav and Jagannath Mishra and 20 others will be decided on Saturday by a special CBI court here in the fodder scam case pertaining to fraudulent withdrawal of more than Rs 89 lakh from Deoghar Treasury between 1991 and 1994.

Lalu, accompanied by younger son Tejaswi Yadav, arrived here to present himself before the special CBI Judge Shiv Pal Singh.

On Friday, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo had said that he respected the judiciary and expressed hope that he would also get a clean chit in the fodder scam case.

"We trust and respect the judiciary. We will not let BJP`s conspiracies work," Lalu Prasad Yadav said here.

Expressing hope for a fair judgment, the former Bihar chief minister had also said that the 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.

The fodder scam case relates to the alleged fraudulent withdrawal of Rs. 95 lakh from the Deoghar treasury.

Overall, more than Rs.900 crore was reportedly siphoned off from the Chaibasa treasury over two decades.

The RJD chief has already been convicted and sentenced to five years of imprisonment in one of the five fodder scam cases.

Besides the two ex-chief ministers, former MP R K Rana, three former IAS officers - Phoolchand Singh, Beck Julius and Mahesh Prasad - are also among the 22 accused in the fodder case.

The other accused in the case include former Bihar minister Vidya Sagar Nishad, former Public Accounts Committee chairmen Jagdish Sharma and Dhruv Bhagat.

A chargesheet was filed against 38 persons on October 27, 1997.

Eleven of them died and three turned approvers while two other accused confessed to their crime and were convicted in 2006-07, a CBI official said.

The accused are facing charges under IPC sections 120B, 409, 418, 420, 467, 468, 471, 477 (A), 201 and 511 and under Prevention of Corruption Act section 13 (1) D read with 13 (2).
The order was reserved on December 13.

Lalu faces three other fodder cases.