NEW DELHI, 22 January — The RJD chief Laloo Prasad Yadav and Dr. Jagannath Mishra, both former chief ministers of Bihar, are now free after a period of 52 days behind bars. The Supreme Court yesterday granted bail to Yadav and Mishra in RC-68 A, fodder scam case.
The court granted them bail on posting a bond of 100,000 rupees each and a surety for an equal amount. Yadav and Mishra are accused of conspiring to defraud the Bihar Animal Husbandry Department of millions of rupees in what is known as the fodder scam while they were in office.
"We had passed an order on Dec. 14, 2001, ordering their release on bail on certain conditions. The present case is another one in the same group of cases and we do not want to take any different view in these cases," a bench comprising judges K. T. Thomas and S. N. Phukan said. "We order their release on the conditions same as those imposed in the Dec. 14 order," the court ruled.
The court had, on Dec. 14, imposed stringent conditions in its bail order warning Yadav to desist from any activity on his release. The court had also directed both Yadav and Mishra to execute personal bail bonds of 100,000 rupees each and sureties for similar amounts before the special court at Ranchi in Jharkhand.
Both Yadav and Mishra had surrendered before the special court at Ranchi on Nov. 26 and were subsequently sent to judicial custody.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a total of 64 cases against 102 persons in the fodder scam for allegedly siphoning off over 7 billion rupees in a series of orchestrated fraudulent acts by creating fake bills and other false documents. Of these, 52 cases involved withdrawal of huge sums from the government treasuries situated in the territories now falling within Jharkhand.
Of the 52 cases, charges had been filed in 36 cases in the Patna special court before Jharkhand came into being.
Yadav has been charged in seven cases. On Oct. 5, the Supreme Court had transferred all these cases to Jharkhand from Bihar, saying the offenses had been committed within the territorial jurisdiction of the newly carved-out state.
While restraining Laloo Yadav from making any public comment on fodder scam cases to gain political mileage, the court had said that the accused would not attempt to influence the witnesses and tamper with the evidence.
