Court Asks Cbi To Reply On Bail Plea Of Bureaucrats

A special court yesterday asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to reply on the bail applications of two IAS officials, Mahesh Prasad and K Arumugam, in connection with the Rs 950 crore fodder scam today.

Rejecting the CBI plea, L R Ansari, to defer the agencys reply to some other day, the special judge, S K Lal, said the CBI should make its submission on the application today.

Earlier, appearing on behalf of Prasad and Arumugam, senior counsel of Patna High Court Kanhaiya Prasad Singh criticised the investigating agency for booking the two officials on what he alleged flimsy grounds.

 

Mahesh Prasad and Arumugam were arrested in connection with a conspiracy angle case of the scam in which Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav also figures. Singh said the case related to excessive withdrawals through forged and fake bills to the tune of over Rs 34 crore from the district treasury at Chaibasa during the financial year 1994-95 and the two officials were not in any way connected with it.

He said Arumugam was the secretary of the AHD from May 1990 to September 1992 and Prasad held the post from October 1992 to May 1994.

With regard to excessive withdrawals from the Chaibasa treasury, Singh said the two officials do not come into the picture as they have neither selected the contractors nor passed the bills.

The district officials of the AHD (Chaibasa district) were responsible for the fraud, he said. Referring to the alleged complicity of Mahesh Prasad in granting extension of service to S B Sinha, alleged kingpin of the scam and former regional director of AHD (Ranchi), Singh said his client had not favoured the extension.

He said Chief Minister Laloo Prasad had called for the file from the AHD secretariat in November, 1993 following a strong-worded recommendation by the then leader of opposition in the state assembly, Jagannath Mishra, for facilitating extension of the service of Sinha. Singh said when the file came to Mahesh Prasad he specifically asked for the consent of vigilance department and other concerned authorities for forwarding it to CM.

He said all the concerned departments and authorities including minister (AHD) gave a clean chit to Sinha, on the file which later got the CMs nod for the extension.

Singh alleged that CBI had come with a vague and general allegation far beyond the truth to unnecessarily harass the two officials in the case.

He urged the court to ask the CBI to specify charges against the two officials in the scam.

Meanwhile, the Janata Dal MLA, R K Rana, considered close to the Chief Minister, petitioned in the court for a direction to the CBI to detail the list of cases in which the agency has implicated him (Rana) in connection with the scam.