On Saturday, April 17th, the Jharkhand High Court issued bail to RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav in the fodder scam case involving a fraudulent withdrawal from the Dumka Treasury.
The development comes after the High Court denied Lalu’s bail request on February 19, stating that he already had two months to serve half of his prison term and that bail could only be issued after that.
Following the rejection of the appeal, Lalu Prasad’s counsel argued that the two-month prison sentence had not been counted, claiming that Prasad had been in judicial detention for one month in 1997 and another month in 2001.
In this case, Yadav was sentenced to seven years in prison.
The Fodder Scam
In four fodder scam cases, the RJD supremo has been found guilty. In 2013, he was found guilty in the first of three trials, and in 2017 and 2018, he was found guilty in two others.
The scandalous withdrawal of Rs 3.5 crore from the Dumka treasury by officials of the Animal Husbandry Department between 1991 and 1996, when Lalu was the chief minister, is the subject of this event.
In relation to the fodder scam case, Lalu has been in prison since December 2017 and was sentenced to seven years in jail in 2018 under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and seven years under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Tejashwi Yadav, his uncle, has been heading the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in his absence and has been credited with the party’s good showing in the Bihar election last year. Mr. Yadav was absent from a state election campaign for the first time in 40 years.
The largest party was Tejashwi Yadav’s, but the opposition coalition fell short of a majority, and the BJP and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) formed the government for a second time.
