Lagatar24 Network
Ranchi, Jan.29: The CBI court will deliver judgment in a case of a fodder scam involving the former chief minister of Bihar Lalu Prasad Yadav on February 15.
The case is related to Doranda treasury and involves Rs 139 crore. The amount was said to have been illegally withdrawn from the treasury. As many as 110, including Prasad, are accused in the case.
The fodder scam was a corruption scandal that involved the embezzlement of about ?9.4 billion from the government treasury when Jharkhand was not carved out from Bihar. Among those implicated in the theft and arrested were Yadav, former Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra.
The scandal led to the end of Lalu’s reign as Chief Minister. Dr Dineshwar Prasad Sharma is also alleged to have received ?300.60 crores from S. N. Sinha. On 23 December 2017, Lalu Prasad Yadav was convicted by a special CBI court while Jagannath Misra was acquitted.
The theft spanned for many years, and allegedly involved numerous Bihar state’s administrative and elected officials across multiple administrations of the Indian National Congress and the Janata Dal parties.
The corruption scheme involved the fabrication of “vast herds of fictitious livestock” for which fodder, medicines and animal husbandry equipment was supposedly procured. Although the scandal broke in 1996, the theft had been in progress, and increased in size, for over two decades. Besides the magnitude and duration of the theft, the scam was and continues to be covered in media due to the extensive nexus between tenured bureaucrats, elected politicians and businesspeople that is revealed, and as an example of the Mafia Raj that has penetrated several state-run economic sectors in the country.
As of May 2013, the trial was completed in 44 cases out of a total of 53 cases. More than 500 accused have been convicted and awarded punishments by various courts.
