Fodder scam: Lalu Prasad Yadav gets five years in jail

Former Bihar Chief Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad Yadav was held guilty and sentenced to five years rigorous imprisonment by a special CBI court in Ranchi on Wednesday, in a case pertaining to siphoning of around Rs 35 crore from Chaibasa district treasury, now in Jharkhand, in the 1990s. This is the third case where Prasad, the RJD supremo, has been convicted.

Pronouncing the judgment, special CBI judge S Shankar Prasad also slapped a fine of Rs five lakh on Yadav, who is presently lodged in Ranchi's Hotwar jail. He is serving his conviction of three-and-a-half years in the second fodder scam case of fraudulent withdrawals from Deoghar district treasury, which was announced on January 6.

Yadav's first conviction was a five-years in jail sentence in the Chaibasa treasury withdrawal case was pronounced in 2013. He received bail from the Supreme Court later that year. He is accused in a total of six cases in the Rs 1,000-crore fodder scam, which pertains to embezzlement of government money in undivided Bihar the name of cattle feed, medicines and other equipment in the early 1990s, and was unearthed in 1996.