Fed on fraud

Laloo Prasad Yadav, who was then chief minister and held charge of the finance portfolio, is accused of conspiracy in the case and has even spent time in prison in connection with it.

The CBI has filed 64 chargesheets cases; of which 55 are now in Jharkhand. Six are in the CBI court in Patna. Two cases have resulted in conviction—one each in Bihar and Jharkhand. Except a few cases that the agency dropped later on, nobody has been acquitted by court so far.

CBI officials say the cases under trial are in advanced stages. Rail minister Laloo Prasad Yadav is accused in six cases, of conspiring to cause loss to the state and protecting the other conspirators. The CBI also filed eight cases of possessing disproportionate assets; one of them is against Laloo and wife Rabri—they are accused of having Rs 48 lakh worth assets disproportionate to their known sources of income.

This DA case, on which hearing is one in Patna CBI court on a daily basis, is a ticking time bomb for Laloo, who quit the chief ministership of Bihar and went to jail five times on the fodder cases. Though the grounds on which he quit as chief minister have not changed, Laloo became a union minister, with his wife firmly in power in Bihar. Hearing in the DA case against Laloo is likely to conclude in the next couple of months and its verdict is bound to attract media attention. Watch this space.

But the change in government in Delhi has already affected trial in the DA case against Laloo. The CBI had requested the Attorney General to appear in the trial court; with the government and the AG changed in Delhi, the agency has not even received a reply on the matter.

From day one, the fodder scandal was an instrument of intense political manoeuvring. Laloo Yadav and former Bihar CM Jagannth Mishra, scores of politicians, IAS officers were accused— all together there are more than 500. Former prime ministers I K Gujral and Dewe Gowda’s names got entangled, for their alleged inclination to protect Laloo.

Laloo had initially wanted the entire case to be wrapped and buried by a SIT of the Bihar state police. 1n 1995 end, when the CAG raised questions about excessive withdrawals in the AHD, the government sought reports from DMs.

Chaibasa DM came up with startling revelations of withdrawals, followed by others. By then media too had began to focus on the scandal. Day by day it grew—even today the CBI doesn’t have a figure on the amount of money that was fraudulently withdrawn from the state treasury. The trend began as a trickle in late 70s and acquired monstrous proportions after Laloo took over as Bihar CM in 1990.

In 1996, the Patna HC ordered CBI investigation, on a PIL by Shiwanand Tiwari and others. The state government went in appeal to SC; SC upheld the HC order and ordered regular monitoring of the investigation by the Patna HC. The state government had to hand over the cases to the CBI. The CBI took over 40 odd cases from the SIT and instituted the rest.

Besides Laloo, other accused in the cases too don’t seem to be having a bad time—R K Rana, who started as a Class 3 employee of the AHD and now owner of a house in his village which has a drive-in to the third floor has been elected to the Lok Sabha. Vidya Sagar Nishad, is among the list of RJD nominees to Rajya Sabha.

Shiwanad Tiwari, the man who fancied himself as crusader against corruption swallowed all that he said of Laloo when he got a good bargain in the political market place; he is now a cabinet minister and spokesperson for Laloo. In the LS elections he finished a third on an RJD ticket.

In the convicted cases, AHD clerk Ramballabh Chaudhary and clerk of Muzaffarpur treasury Naresh Choubey and Lalit Kumar Prasad Srivastawa were charged with fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 5 lakh from Muzaffarpur treasury in one and in the other nine were accused of withdrawing Rs 15 lakh from the Lohardagga treasury way back in 1995.