RANCHI, 25 April 2005 — Charges are to be framed today against senior bureaucrats and politicians, including Railway Minister Lalu Prasad, in one of the cases relating to the 9.5 billion rupees fodder scam. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court has directed that all the accused be physically present in the court today when charges are framed.
Almost a decade after the scam was unearthed in Bihar, charges will be framed in RC 68A/96, one of the scam cases that relates to allegedly fraudulent withdrawals between 1990 and 1995 by the animal husbandry department of over 370 million rupees, ostensibly for the purchase of fodder, from the Chaibasa treasury, now part of Jharkhand.
The scam came to light in 1996. The Patna High Court had directed the cases be handed over to the CBI. After Jharkhand was created in 2000, 39 of the 61 cases were transferred to the new state. Lalu Prasad appealed this in the Supreme Court, which rejected his contention.
Lalu Prasad is accused in five of the cases. He resigned as Bihar chief minister in 1997 after a court issued a warrant in one of the cases. Besides Lalu Prasad, the accused include former Bihar Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra, former MP Rajo Singh, former Bihar Animal Husbandry Minister Vidyasagar Nishad, former central minister Chandradeo Prasad Verma, four bureaucrats, veterinary doctors and other government officials.
Of the 76 accused, three have died and three have turned state witnesses in the case. Charges will be framed against the remaining 70 accused.
Meanwhile, Gujarat yesterday ordered an inquiry into the alleged attack on Lalu Prasad following the train accident that took the lives of 24 people last week. A one-member inquiry commission, comprising Justice B.N. Patel, will submit its report in three months, government officials said.
The alleged attack occurred during Lalu Prasad’s visit to the state after a passenger train, Sabarmati Express, collided with a stationary goods train at the Samaliya railway station near Baroda.
The inquiry will probe if there was an attack on the minister and if there was any breach on the part of the state government’s protocol as claimed by the railway minister.
The minister, who alleged that the crowd attack was part of a conspiracy hatched by Chief Minister Narendra Modi to kill him, demanded the Modi government’s dismissal and imposition of president’s rule in the state.
His charges led the Cabinet Committee of Political Affairs (CCPA) to seek a report from Gujarat Governor Naval Kishore Sharma. After a meeting with Modi Thursday night, Sharma had sent his report to the government.
