Soon after his conviction in one of the six fodder scam cases from 1996, former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav on Saturday blamed a “sly BJP” for the ruling and said the “truth will win in the end”.
Minutes after a special court of the Central Bureau of Investigation in Ranchi convicted Yadav and 14 others in the fodder scam case, his Twitter account was flooded with posts under his name. In one tweet, he claimed Bihar was “standing behind him”, and in another, he asked people to “beware of conspiracies”.
The Rashtriya Janata Dal chief was convicted in connection with the alleged fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 84.5 lakh from the Deoghar district treasury between 1994 and 1996. Before the verdict, too, he had said his political opponents had made up the case. “It is the BJP, the RSS and Nitish Kumar who are behind all this,” he had said.
Other BJP and Congress leaders also reacted to Yadav’s conviction.
Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the conviction was a lesson that the “law will catch up with you”. Health Minister JP Nadda accused Yadav of politicising the matter. “Just to deviate, he is levelling allegations of conspiracy on the BJP,” he said.
Meanwhile, Congress leader Manish Tewari said Yadav and his lawyers were “capable of fighting this case”. “He has been fighting this legal battle since 1996,” he said. “It started when BJP leaders filed a Public Interest Litigation against him in the Patna High Court.”
Janata Dal (United) leader KC Tyagi said there was no “place for corruption in our society and politics”. Another JD(U) leader, Niraj Kumar, called Yadav an “icon of corruption”.
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