Laloo Moves Court For Anticipatory Bail

Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav moved the designated CBI court yesterday for anticipatory bail in the Rs 950 crore fodder scam. The bail petition was filed in the court of S K Lal under Section 438 of the CrPC.

Senior advocate Chitranjan Kumar Sinha, who moved the bail application running into 111 pages on behalf of the Chief Minister, is learnt to have taken the plea that his client was in no way connected with the fraudulent withdrawal and had been falsely implicated in the fodder scam. The case will come up for hearing today.

Another lawyer, P N Pandey, who had filed the bail application of former Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra on June 11, is also likely to plead the case of Yadav. Pandey when contacted refused to divulge the details of the bail petition and said that the matter would be considered by the court today. Bihar governor A R Kidwai had given his sanction to chargesheet the Chief Minister, two of his cabinet colleagues Bhola Ram Toofani (Animal Husbandry) Vidya Sagar Nishad (Labour) Union minister Chandradeo Prasad Verma, former Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra and others in RC 20 case related to the fodder scam.

The counsel for the Chief Minister has deposed before the court that his client was apprehending arrests following newspapers reports that very soon senior politicians would be nabbed.

Laloos lawyer is also learnt to have taken the plea that there was no legal evidence against his client. and the hearsay evidence obtained from Dipesh Chandak, a Calcutta based supplier, under Section 164 of the code of Criminal could not be made the basis for charging the petitioner as a hearsay evidence relating to co-conspirator was not admissible under Section 8 of the Evidence Act.

Sinha is understood to have taken the plea that his client had been implicated just to tarnish political image and if he is arrested the unblemished political career of the petitioner would be tarnished beyond repair. The petitioner in no way made to undergo imprisonment since there was no legal evidence against and the charges leveled prima facie do not constitute any criminal offence.

Meanwhile, the CBI judge S K Lal yesterday rejected the bail of two IAS officials K Arumugam and Mahesh Prasad who were arrested by the CBI in connection with the fodder scam. Both these officials now under suspension were the secretaries of the Animal Husbandry Department between 1990 and 1994.

These two officials had been charged with criminal conspiracy alongwith chief minister, Laloo Prasad Yadav in RC 20, one of the 48 criminal cases filed so far relating to Animal Husbandry department fraud.