The designated court yesterday refused interim stay on the arrest of Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav while reserving order on his anticipatory bail application in connection with the fodder scam.
The special court of Sudhansu Kumar Lal turned down the request of Chief Ministers counsel P N Pandey for interim stay till the courts final order on the bail application. The court asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to produce the case diary before it today in connection with the conspiracy angle of the Rs 950-crore scam case, for its order on Yadavs petition.
Yadav is the first Chief minister in independent India to be chargesheeted while in office.
Besides Yadav, former Bihar Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra, two Bihar ministers Bhola Ram Toofani (animal husbandry), Vidya Sagar Nishad (labour), former Union minister of state for rural development and employment Chandradeo Prasad Verma and several top officials of Central as well as state services are named as accused in the all important case RC 20/96 relating to the fake withdrawal of over Rs 35 crore from the Chaibasa treasury in South Bihar.
All the fifty-six accused have been chargesheeted under sections 409, 420, 467, 471, 477 and 477(A), 201, 511 read with 120 B of the Indian Penal Code and sections 13(2) read with 13(1) (c) and 13(1) of the prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
Incidentally, the chargesheet against the Chief Minister and others was filed a day before the hearing into the fodder scam was to be resumed by the monitoring bench of the Patna High Court on Tuesday.
The voluminous 2,000 pages chargesheet was brought to the court of the special judge at 3.45 p.m. in a brief case and submitted to the peshkar of the judge who, according to sources, had refused to accept the chargesheet at his residence.
Earlier in the day, Yadavs counsel P N Pande, requesting bail for his client, cited several cases of the Supreme Court, including the Somnath Thapa case, 1996. He stated that mere association is no evidence of conspiracy and stated that the CBI was out to humiliate his client on the lines of Indira Gandhi.
Pande pleaded that his client was suffering due to political differences within the party and asserted that is it not the bounded duty of the court to avert the constitutional crisis prevailing in Bihar.
Pande flayed the CBI for not coming out with any earthshaking report and maintained that the investigative agencys finding were confined to the report of the Comptroller and Accountant General (CAG) which too had not mentioned about the fraudulent withdrawal in its earlier report.
He said the CAG had mentioned the fraudulent withdrawal in its 1996 report since it had failed in its statutory duty to fulfil its constitutional obligations. The report of the CAG was more in defence of its own failure, he added.
Referring to the allegations of the CBI that Yadav had played a vital role in making Ram Raj Ram the AHD secretary, and in granting an extension of service to S B Sinha, the brain behind the scam, Pande said that Yadav had written out a recommendation letter for Ram since he was a dalit. Pande said that Yadav as leader of opposition and a member of a party that believed in the uplift of dalits and the downtrodden was under obligation to plead his case.
Ram was made the director by the orders of the then Chief Minister Satyendra Sinha and continued to hold the office by the orders of the Supreme Court till 1995. Recommendation is no crime, said Pande. Referring to allegations that the Chief Minister had stalled the vigilance inquiry, his counsel argued that the vigilance inquiry had, in fact, been stalled by Director General, Vigilance, D N Sahay on July 4, 1994.
Its a travesty of justice that one who stalled the inquiry has become a witness while the Chief Minister who ordered the inquiry is an accused in the case, Yadavs counsel said.
The counsel for the Chief Minister also pleaded that so far as admission of the kiths and kins of the Chief Minister in a school of Ranchi was concerned, the name of S B Sinha did figure in the writings for the Chief Minister as local guardian. In fact one Shukla Mohanty, a teacher of the childern filled the form and gave the name of S B Sinha as local guardian. Sinha never visited the school to see the children of the Chief Minister nor his (Sinhas) signature were available on the visitors register. This can not be, by any stretch of imagination, be an evidence to show the proximity of the Chief Minister with S B Sinha.
Ujjwal Singh PATNA
Yadavs counsel also pointed out that the report of the tenth finance commission could not be considered as evidence against the Chief Minister and requested the court to give an order that his client was given the bail and some breathing time the pendency of the case.
Laloos residence wears a deserted look
The 1, Anne Marg residence of Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav wore a deserted look after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a chargesheet against him and 55 others yesterday afternoon in the court of designated CBI judge S K Lal.
A visibly shaken Chief Minister declared that he was expecting it and reiterated that he would not step down. I enjoy the support of 156 legislators and my future will be decided by them and not by the CBI, he said. When asked about his possible dismissal by the Centre, Yadav maintained that his government was at the helm of affairs at the Centre and I really do not know about the possible decision.
Yadav ruled out a split in the Janata Dal and said that he was fighting his own battle politically as well as legally. Yadav told media persons that his battle for social justice and providing dignity to the dalits would continue. When asked as to why he was not keeping to tradition by resigning, the Bihar stalwart shot back: Who follows the tradition now in the country.
