The Jharkhand High Court on Friday extended the provisional bail of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav in the fodder scam for another six weeks till August 17 on medical grounds, PTI reported.
Yadav provisional bail was scheduled to end on July 3.
“The doctor had advised my client to rest for three months,” Yadav’s lawyer told ANI. “We had already gotten a provisional bail for one week and now the court has extended it for six more weeks. We’ll apply for a further extension if required.”
On April 20, the High Court had asked for Yadav’s health reports while hearing his request for three months of bail on medical grounds. The former Bihar chief minister was undergoing treatment at All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi until April 30, when he was discharged and sent back to Ranchi Medical College.
Yadav was sent to a jail in Ranchi in December after a court found him guilty in several fodder scam cases. The scam – exposed in 1996 – involves 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. In one of the six cases against him, he had fraudulently withdrawn around Rs 3.5 crore from the Dumka district’s treasury when he was the chief minister.
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