NEW DELHI, 20 November — Authorities in the eastern state of Jharkhand are scouting for a safe place to jail former Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav in case he is refused bail by a court trying him in a multi-billion rupee misappropriation scandal.
Laloo, chief of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), has been asked by a court to surrender by Nov. 26 in a case of alleged fraudulent withdrawal of 1.82 billion rupees from a treasury here at a time when it was part of Bihar. The special court of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had issued a non-bailable warrant against Laloo.
The Jharkhand government is now busy looking for a safe place for Laloo’s incarceration in case the court rejects his bail application, official sources said.
Jharkhand’s main Birsa Munda jail is overcrowded, as it has 2,000 prisoners against a capacity of just 350. Official sources admit that lodging a high profile politician like Laloo in that jail would pose a security problem.
“The state government cannot take the risk of lodging Laloo Yadav in jail due to security reason,” said a senior official.
Laloo’s RJD has already made security threat to its chief a big issue. “The central government is hatching a conspiracy to kill Laloo Yadav by putting him with hard core criminals in jail,” Girinath Singh, RJD legislator in Jharkhand, alleged. Jharkhand Chief minister Babu Lal Marandi’s reported statement that Laloo would be treated like a common prisoner has also drawn flak from RJD leaders. Sources said the government was planning to lodge the Bihar strongman in a makeshift jail.
But it wasn’t yet clear if Laloo could be put in a makeshift jail because in the past the Patna High Court had asked the Bihar government to lodge him in a regular jail in other cases related to the scandal. The former Bihar chief minister, who will reach here from Patna on Nov. 25 in a chariot, will lead a procession named as ‘Marandi Bhagao, Jharkhand Bachao’ (Drive out Marandi, save Jharkhand), in a campaign against the Jharkhand chief minister.
Meanwhile, Laloo has again succeeded in finding another friend and well-wisher in the enemy’s camp, when a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member of parliament (MP) from Bettiah, M.P. Jaiswal, started seeing virtue in him. Before Jaiswal, film star-turned politician, Shatrughan Sinha, and another party MP, Kirti Azad were seen favoring Laloo in public.
The three-time MP, Jaiswal has invited Chief Minister Rabri Devi and Laloo to be the chief guests at a function in Patna on Nov. 24. While Jaiswal strongly criticized the BJP for neglecting his Vaishya community even though it had backed the party in various polls, he was soft on the RJD chief.
“Laloo Yadav may not have done anything for the Vaishya community but he has at least given them a sense of recognition,” Jaiswal said.
