Ranchi court issues arrest warrant against Lalu's close aide

A special CBI court today issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against RJD supremo Lalu Prasad's close aide Bhola Yadav, a Bihar MLA, for his remarks on the Fodder scam verdict involving fraudulent withdrawal of the money from Dumka Treasury.

Special Judge Shivpal Singh issued the order after Yadav failed to appear in the court today in response to an earlier contempt-of-court notice to him.

The Ranchi court had directed Yadav on April 3 to appear before it today on April 19 over his reported comments that the verdict sentencing the RJD supremo in Dumka case was "not impartial" and was based on wrong observations.

The opinion was aired after the court sentenced Lalu Prasad to 14 years in jail and imposed Rs 60 lakh as fine in the case on March 24.

When contacted, Bhola Yadav said in Patna that he has challenged Ranchi special court's summons to him in the Jharkhand High Court.

"I have challenged the Ranchi court's order (issuing summons) in the high court (Jharkhand). My lawyer informed the honourable Ranchi special court along with the documents that showed that an appeal has been filed but even then, the judge issued the arrest warrant against me," Bhola Yadav told PTI.

Yadav, who has maintained that he never uttered a single word against the court at any point of time in the past, said he had talked about the CBI and not the CBI court but a Hindi newspaper had published my remarks as having been made against the CBI court.

Even the newspaper has published corrigendum in this regard, he said.

"It has been the RJD's stand all through that Lalu is not getting justice because of the biased investigation by the CBI. I had made a statement to this effect while leaving for Delhi last month," Yadav said.