A Patna court yesterday rejected the plea of former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra for a regular bail in a conspiracy angle case of the fodder scam.
Designated CBI judge SK Lal granted Mishra a weeks time to move the high court for an appeal.
The court had reserved its order on the petition after two days of hearing on Tuesday.
While rejecting the prayer, the judge said that he would pronounce the judgement in detail today.
Earlier, the Patna High Court had granted anticipatory bail to Mishra in case no RC 20(a)/96 in which former chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav and two of his former Cabinet colleagues are also accused.
Arguing the case for Mishra, his counsel and supreme court advocate DD Thakur told the court that charges against him were misleading and hypothetical. The CBI had failed to produce any corroborative evidence to prove the charge of a supplier, Dipesh Chandak, in a confessional statement under section 164 of the CrPC that he (Mishra) had received Rs 75 lakh as bribe from the scamsters.
Thakur said that the recommending letter, written by his client, for extension of the service of a former regional director of the animal husbandry department and alleged kingpin of the scam, S B Sinha, was part of the routine functioning of a public representative.
Strongly opposing the bail prayer, CBI special public prosecutor LR Ansari said that circumstantial evidence put forth by the investigating agency in the case, proved Mishras complicity in the fraud.
Ansari contended that the letter, written by Mishra to the then chief minister, Laloo Yadav, for extension of service of Sinha proved Mishras collusion with scamsters.
He also said that the relase of telephone connection from the discretionary quota of dr mishra as member of parliament to the daughter-in-law of dr sinha pointed to a close relationship the former chief minister had with the kingpin of the scam.
He charged dr mishra with scuttling a vigilance probe against several ahd officials and said that he as leader of opposition in the state assembly had written to mr yadav for stalling an inquiry against some senior officials of the department.
