A CBI special court sentenced Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad to five years jail term and imposed Rs 60,00,000 fine in fifth case of the Animal Husbandry Department scam, which is commonly known as the fodder scam, related with fraudulent withdrawal of £13.93 million from the Doranda treasury in Jharkhand.” We’ll now appeal to the upper court for relief in the case”, Lalu’s advocate, Prabhat Kumar, said.
Along with 37 others, Lalu Prasad was convicted in the case earlier on February 15, 2022 and the court reserved its order on the quantum of sentence. It pronounced three years jail term to other 35 convicts in the case on February 15.
Prasad has been convicted in four other fodder scam cases and served more than half of the jail terms in most of them.
Suffering from multiple diseases, he is currently on bail and admitted to the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi, from where he was virtually present in the court on Monday while the sentence was pronounced by judge S.K. Sashi.
Apart from Prasad, former Bihar MP Jagdish Sharma, then Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Dhruv Bhagat, AHD secretary Beck Julius and AHD director K M Prasad and others were the other accused in the case.
The £95 million fodder scam had come to light in January 1996 in undivided Bihar. It was related with fraudulent withdrawal of public money from government treasuries of various districts. Prasad has been in the Birsa Munda central jail in Ranchi since December 2017 in different fodder scam cases and he was granted bail in April 2021. He was also admitted in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) New Delhi. Recently, he had gone Ranchi to physically appear in court in the Doranda treasury case but was admitted again to the RIMS.
RJD leaders said they have full faith in the judiciary and would go to the Ranchi High Court for appeal in the case.
