Former Bihar Chief Minister and RJD chief lalu Prasad appeared before a Special CBI court here on Monday in connection with a fodder scam case - RC38A/96, related to illegal withdrawal of money from the Dumka treasury. Prasad and 47 others, accused in the Rs 950 crore fodder scam case were summoned by the court after some of them did not register their attendance for the last two years.
"As soon as the proceedings in the court started at 7:30 am, lalu Ji was the first to appear before the court of Shiv Pal Singh and register his attendance.
He was let go by the court within minutes after registering his attendance in the court," said lalu's counsel Prabhat Kumar.
Although there were a total of 48 accused persons in the case, only 29 of them appeared before the court to register their attendance as 15 of the accused persons died during the trial while two of them have been made approver and the other two accused persons have been granted relief by the High Court, added Kumar.
"Approvers need not appear before the court as they are not counted along with the accused persons," said Kumar. The case will be heard next on July 29.
Other prominent personalities who appeared before the court along with lalu Yadav included politicians RK Rana and Jagdish Sharma and retired IAS officer Beck Julius.
The court, according to Kumar, was lying vacant for the last two years after AK Rai was transferred from here. The new Judge came here one and a half months back and found that some of the accused persons have died while some of them were even not giving their attendances in the court.
In order to streamline the trial process, all the 48 accused persons were asked to be physically present before the court, he said.
The case relates to fraudulent withdrawal of over Rs 3.42 crore from the Dumka treasury. The case is currently at the prosecution-evidence stage in which statements of prosecution witnesses are being recorded. As many as 240 prosecution witnesses had been listed by the CBI, of which the statements of 208 were recorded in the court.
lalu has already been sentenced five years' imprisonment in another case of fodder scam RC20A/96 on October 3, 2013 by a Special CBI Court leading to his disqualification from Parliament membership and also rendered him ineligible for contesting elections for the next 11 years.
Besides lalu, six other politicians along with four retired IAS officers were also sentenced imprisonment for fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 37.7 crore from Chaibasa treasury when lalu Prasad was heading the Janata Dal government in the early 1990s in the erstwhile Bihar.
Prasad has been booked by the CBI in six fodder scam cases - one in Bihar and five in Jharkhand.