Former Union minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav was granted bail on Friday in the 139 crore Doranda Treasury scam by the Jharkhand High Court.
He was handed a five-year jail term by a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court. Yadav had been in custody since his conviction and sentencing by the CBI court in February in a fodder scam case that involved the embezzlement of over Rs 139 crores from Doranda treasury.
Prabhat Kumar, Prasad’s counsel was quoted by PTI as saying, “The Jharkhand High court has accepted our petition for suspension of the sentence and has granted bail. We had pleaded that he has served half of his five-year sentence in this case. Prasad has already served 41 months in jail ...We had submitted the trial court's certified copy. The court has granted bail.”
Kumar said that the high court’s order will likely be communicated to the lower court by Tuesday and then they will submit the bail bond and obtain the release order.
The Jharkhand High Court had on April 8 deferred the hearing following a petition by the 73-year-old incarcerated leader which challenged his conviction in the fodder scam case.
The former Chief Minister of Bihar, Lalu Yadav, had been sentenced to five years in prison and was slapped with a fine of Rs 60 lakh by a the special CBI court in Ranchi in the fifth fodder scam case against him.
On April 8, Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh had been informed by the CBI that the agency could not comply with the earlier order of the court to file a counter affidavit in the matter and pleaded for more time.
To that, Kapil Sibal, who was representing Yadav, said that his client had served more than half of the sentence in the case and deserved to be released from custody.
Lalu Prasad Yadav had allegedly received kickbacks through the animal husbandary department for which he was convicted by the CBI court on February 15. He had been sentenced to five years of imprisonment on February 21, compounded with a fine of Rs 60 lakh in the case.
