NEW DELHI, 26 April 2005 — A special court yesterday charged Indian Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav in a multimillion-dollar corruption case.
Lalu Prasad attended the hearing in Ranchi, capital of the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, where the charges were read out to him and 69 others.
The United News of India said Lalu Prasad told the court the charges were “false”.
Lalu Prasad was chief minister of impoverished Bihar state when 370 million rupees (eight million dollars) was withdrawn from Chaibasa district, allegedly to buy cattle fodder for distribution among the poor.
A total of $220 million was allegedly withdrawn with Lalu Prasad’s tacit approval from animal husbandry departments in different parts of the state, formally part of Bihar.
The reading of the charges in the special court of India’s top investigation agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, opens the way for the full trial of the scam that came to light in 1996.
Another former Bihar chief minister, Jaganath Mishra, was also charged, along with senior civil servants.
Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal party — an ally of the ruling Congress Party — administered Bihar continuously for almost 15 years from 1991 until his party lost in provincial polls last February.
India’s opposition demanded Lalu Prasad’s resignation from the federal Cabinet.
“Charges have been framed against Lalu Prasad and his associates under various sections including cheating and fraud,” Vijay Kumar Malhotra, a spokesman for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, told Parliament.
“A federal minister had to appear before a court and therefore the prime minister should dismiss him forthwith.” Lalu Prasad, who joined Premier Manmohan Singh’s Cabinet last year, has been facing flak over a series of deadly train crashes.
The latest accident in the western state of Gujarat killed 24 and injured 150 when an express train rammed into a freight train on Thursday.
That sparked a mob attack on Lalu Prasad during a visit to the collision site that the railways minister said was planned by activists allied with the Hindu nationalists who rule Gujarat.
Lalu Prasad repeated the blame on the Hindu activists in a statement which he read out yesterday in Parliament amid uproarious scenes by the opposition.
“... when I was going to visit the injured passengers ... some members of the Bajrang Dal, RSS and VHP shouted slogans, hurled abuses and attacked my vehicle, breaking its windscreen and tried to hurt me physically. They threw water bottles and ice pieces at me,” the Press Trust of India reported him as saying.
A self-professed advocate of social justice and a committed secularist, Lalu Prasad was born into a cowherd’s family and his relentless attack on upper-caste Hindus have earned him hero-like status among the millions of Bihari peasants.
