The verdict in the second of six cases in Bihar’s fodder scam is expected after 3 pm on Saturday. A special Central Bureau of Investigation court will pronounce the verdict in the case, in which Rashtriya Janata Dal chief and former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav is an accused.
This case is connected with the alleged fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 84.5 lakh from the Deoghar district treasury between 1994 and 1996, when Yadav was Bihar’s chief minister. The scam – exposed in 1996 – involved the embezzlement of around Rs 1,000 crore from the state exchequer for the purchase of fictitious medicines and fodder for cattle between 1990 and 1997.
Yadav has said he is not worried about his party since his son Tejashwi “is there”, NDTV reported. “I do hope that I will get justice as in the 2G spectrum case,” he told the media at the Ranchi airport on Saturday. “I have full faith in the judiciary, but whatever verdict will come, I will abide by it.”
He did, however, claim that his political opponents had concocted the case. “It is the BJP, the RSS and Nitish Kumar who are behind all this...They want me to be sent to jail so they have no political opponent, but they don’t know that every worker of the RJD is a Lalu Yadav,” The Hindu quoted him as saying.
Yadav’s hope seems to be fuelled by the judiciary’s recent decisions to acquit all those accused in the 2G scam and in Mumbai’s Adarsh housing scam.
The RJD chief was in jail for a few months in 2013 after a CBI court convicted him in the first of the fodder scam cases. He got bail in December 2013, three months after his conviction. In May this year, the Supreme Court had reinstated criminal conspiracy charges against him in another fodder scam case.
Here is a timeline of the scam.
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