Jailed RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav denied bail by Jharkhand HC; son Tejaswi, ex-DGP DP Ojha get relief
PATNA: Jailed RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav’s hopes to secure freedom and resume political activities were on Friday dashed by Jharkhand High Court as it rejected his bail plea and called for the case details from the special CBI courts that held him guilty in two fodder scam cases.
Yadav had challenged his conviction and five-year jail sentence in the Deoghar treasury case of the scam and sought bail. But Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh rejected his plea and called for a copy of the judgment delivered by the special CBI court of judge Shiv Pal Singh on December 23 last. Hearing on the bail plea was fixed for March 16.
Denial of bail came as a rude jolt to RJD as Bihar’s main Opposition party has been witnessing a leadership vacuum since Yadav was imprisoned. The statewide tour against the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government that Yadav’s younger son and former deputy chief minister Tejaswi Yadav plans to start from February 10 would have got a major boost if the RJD chief had come out of jail, said party sources.
The high court also ordered a stay on the contempt of court notice issued to Tejaswi Yadav and three other senior leaders by a CBI special court for an openly casteist interpretation and criticism of Lalu’s conviction in the Deoghar treasury case. Tejaswi, RJD leaders Raghuvansh Prasad Singh and Shivanand Tiwari, and Congress leader Manish Tewari were issued contempt notices on January 3. The case would now be heard by the HC on March 9.
In another development, the HC also ordered a stay on the summons sent to former Bihar DGP DP Ojha in connection with the fodder scam cases by a special CBI court while convicting the RJD chief on December 23. Ojha, who was ADGP of Bihar during the scam, was asked to appear in court on January 23. “Since did not appear, the court had issued an arrest warrant against him, but the HC stayed it,” said his lawyer Manish Mishra.