Patna: Lalu Prasad Yadav has faced a fresh setback after the Jharkhand High Court admitted an appeal filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation seeking to increase his prison sentence in the fodder scam case.
The RJD chief was earlier sentenced to three and a half years in prison for embezzling Rs 89.27 lakh from the Deoghar treasury under inflated bills for animal feed and medicines. The CBI has argued that as the then Chief Minister of Bihar, who also held the finance and animal husbandry portfolios, Lalu Prasad Yadav was fully aware of the fraudulent withdrawals and deserves a harsher punishment.
The court also admitted CBI appeals seeking to enhance the sentences of Julius Beck and Subir Bhattacharya, who were convicted alongside Lalu Prasad. All three were originally sentenced by a special CBI court in 2018 to three and a half years’ imprisonment and fined Rs 10 lakh each.
Three other convicts in the case – RK Rana, Phoolchand Singh, and Mahesh Prasad – have died since their sentencing.
The CBI’s legal team argued that the offence carries a maximum sentence of seven years, and the lower court’s punishment was inadequate given the scale of corruption. At the time of the scam, Jharkhand was still a part of Bihar.
