Nitish Kumar is finished, BJP has set Bihar ablaze: Lalu Yadav

New Delhi: RJD supremo and former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav after being brought to Delhi for treatment at AIIMS on Thursday said that "Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is now finished".

Pointing out the riots and incidents of violence in Bihar, Lalu Yadav said that the "BJP has set the whole state ablaze".

According to news agency PTI, members of two communities clashed on Wednesday over taking out a religious procession in Bihar's Nalanda district, leaving more than 20 persons, including four security personnel, injured.

Nalanda is the native district of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Communal clashes have erupted in several districts in the state since Ram Navami last Sunday.

"People from both sides indulged in heavy stone-pelting in Silao block of the district following a dispute over the route of a Ram Navami procession, and police had to resort to mild use of force besides firing tear gas shells to quell the mobs," Superintendent of Police, Nalanda, Sudhir Kumar Porika said.

Clashes have erupted in districts like Bhagalpur and Aurangabad, triggering a political slugfest with the opposition RJD-Congress combine blaming the spurt in such incidents on alleged dominance of the BJP, the junior partner in the Nitish Kumar government, on the state's bureaucratic machinery.

Lalu Prasad, who is serving jail term in Ranchi since December 23 in a fodder scam case, was taken to New Delhi on medical advice for specialised treatment at AIIMS.

Prasad had been admitted to Rajendra Institute of Medical Science (RIMS) in Ranchi on March 17 on complaints of uneasiness at Birsa Munda Jail and had left for New Delhi on Wednesday by train after a Special CBI court allowed him to seek treatment at Delhi AIIMS.

Senior advocate Chittaranjan Sinha, who has been handling the fodder scam cases for Prasad from the very beginning, said the 69-year-old RJD chief is suffering from diabetes, high creatinine levels and blood pressure.

A special CBI court last week sentenced Yadav to 14 years in prison fine of Rs 60 lakh in Dumka treasury case. He was pronounced guilty on March 19 in a fourth fodder scam case involving fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 3.13 crore from the Dumka treasury between December 1995 and January 1996.

Earlier in January, a CBI court in Ranchi had sentenced Lalu Prasad to five years in jail in the third fodder scam case.

Along with Lalu, former Bihar chief Jagannath Mishra, was also sentenced to five years in prison in the case.

The conviction and the quantum of punishment was delivered in a case related to the Chaibasa Treasury from which Rs 33.67 crore were siphoned off against the actual allocation of just Rs 7.10 lakh in 1992-93.

On January 6, RJD chief Lalu Prasad was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail by a CBI special court in a fodder scam case relating to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 89.27 lakh from the Deoghar Treasury 21 years ago.

Lalu Prasad was convicted in the first fodder scam case in 2013 and awarded five years in jail.

(With inputs from PTI)