Lalu gets 5-yr jail, out of polls 11 yrs

In one of the most widely-awaited judicial pronouncements in recent times, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav was on Thursday sentenced to five years in jail and fined '25 lakh in a 17-year-old case of the '950-crore fodder scam, becoming one of three sitting MPs set to lose their seats in three days. A special CBI court in Jharkhand’s capital Ranchi also sentenced Jagannath Mishra, a former Bihar chief minister like Mr Yadav, to four years in jail and a fine of '2 lakh in the same case while Jagdish Sharma, a sitting MP from Bihar’s ruling JD(U), was sentenced to four years in jail and a fine of '5 lakh. Following the sentencing, both Mr Yadav and Mr Sharma, apart from losing their Lok Sabha seats, now stand barred from contesting elections for six years as per a Supreme Court order. Among the 37 convicts who were told their sentences by judge Prabhas Kumar Singh in this fodder scam case, RC 20-A/96, were former MP and RJD leader R.K. Rana, who was given five years in jail and a fine of '30 lakh, four IAS officers and 25 suppliers of fodder and animal husbandry equipment who were sentenced to imprisonment of four years each. This case pertained to fraudulent withdrawal of '37.70 crore from Chaibasa district treasury — in Jharkhand after Bihar’s bifurcation in 2000 — in the mid-1990s. Mr Yadav, 65, lodged in the Birsa Munda Central Jail in Ranchi since his conviction on Monday, heard via videoconference the pleadings by his lawyer for a lenient sentence and the final sentencing. “How come I have been punished when I have not done any crime ” a distraught Mr Yadav asked of the judge, who replied: “You can appeal in the higher court.” Mr Yadav’s lawyer Chitranjan Prasad, who met him in jail, said he would appeal against both the conviction and the sentences in the high court on October 17. Mr Yadav’s sentence brought shockwaves in the RJD, which was hoping to return to power in Bihar, and the party’s ally LJP, whose chief Ram Vilas Paswan met Mr Yadav in jail on Thursday. The BJP, which considers the RJD-LJP alliance its biggest opponent in Bihar, hailed the sentences awarded by the court.