PATNA: With a special CBI court in Ranchi set to deliver on Saturday the verdict in a case of Bihar’s Rs 1,000-crore fodder scam in which RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav is an accused, his family and the party’s leaders and workers braced themselves for the judicial outcome with bated breaths on Friday.
Accompanied by his younger son and Leader of Opposition in Bihar Assembly, Tejaswi Yadav, the RJD chief reached Ranchi on Friday evening. He will present himself in the court of CBI special judge Shivpal Singh during pronouncement of the verdict in the case RC 64(A)/96, which pertains to the alleged fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 90 lakh from Deoghar district treasury between 1994 and 1996. Yadav, 69, was Bihar chief minister during those years.
“I have full faith in the judiciary, and I hope I will get justice. People across the country have been getting justice from the judiciary. I am not worried,” said the RJD chief upon reaching Ranchi. “There have been elaborate efforts to ruin the public perception about me through false allegations against me. BJP and RSS want me to be restrained behind the bars, but I am not afraid,” he added.
The RJD chief was earlier convicted in a fodder scam case and sentenced to five years in prison on September 30, 2013. After spending 87 days in jail, he walked out on bail granted by the Supreme Court. He has since been facing trial in five other cases of the scam that was unearthed in 1996.
Yadav has so far spent 375 days in jail in connection with the fodder scam. In five jail stints between July 30, 1997 and January 27, 2002, he spent 288 days behind the bars.
RJD leaders said a possible conviction for Lalu would have little impact on the party’s workers, who displayed their “total faith” in him by enforcing Bihar bandh on Thursday.