RJD chief Lalu Prasad comes out of court in Patna on Thursday. (PTI)

Patna, March 1: A CBI special court today framed charges against former Bihar chief ministers Lalu Prasad and Jagannath Mishra in a fodder scam case relating to alleged fraudulent withdrawal of money from treasuries in two districts of the state between 1988 and 1996.

Also facing charges in the case (RC-63A/96) are Janata Dal (United) MPs Jagdish Sharma and Vidya Sagar Nishad, besides former Public Accounts Committee chairman Dhruva Bhagat. Five former secretary-rank IAS officers are among the 33 persons against whom the court ordered framing of charges.

With the passage of time, the investigation and trial in the fodder scam cases have encompassed the ruling as well as the opposition establishments in the state. Former Congress chief minister Mishra, who is at present the chairman of LN Mishra Institute of Social Change, Sharma and Nishad are senior leaders of the ruling JD(U), which, along with the BJP, had many of their leaders fighting against the fodder scam cases as petitioners in the court.

The former secretary-rank IAS officers who got charges slapped on them in the court are Phulchand Singh, Beck Julius, K. Arumugham, A.S, Choudhary and Mahesh Prasad. As many as 31 accused persons, including Lalu Prasad, Mishra, Sharma and Nishad, were present in the court while Bhagat and a supplier, A.K. Singh, played truant.

Taking strong exception to their absence, special judge V.K. Shrivastava issued a warrant of arrest against Bhagat and Singh, fixing March 15 as the date for their surrender. The court also separated their trial from that of the other accused present.

The court fixed April 2 as the next date of hearing for the other accused persons and directed the CBI to produce the prosecution witnesses on that date.

The court framed charges against the accused persons in the case related to the fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 45.96 crore from the Bhagalpur and Banka treasuries during 1988 to 1996. The Supreme Court had paved the way for the framing of charges by rejecting the discharge petitions filed by the accused persons.

The high profile politicos and senior bureaucrats involved in the case filed the petitions to discharge them of the CBI’s charges when the investigating agency filed a chargesheet against them on March 31, 2003. The petitions were contested in the high court and subsequently in the Supreme Court, dragging the framing of charges against them for about eight years.

Lalu Prasad denied the charges when the court read them out to him. “The CBI in connivance with the then political establishment at the Centre has falsely implicated me in the case with the conspiracy to dethrone the Lalu-Rabri governments. I am innocent for the CBI has no proof against me,” the RJD chief said.

Mishra, Sharma and Nishad too took similar pleas. But refusing to accept their pleas, the court slapped charges against them, effectively putting them on trial.

The case, which the CBI had lodged on May 15, 1996, is one of the six against Lalu and other accused persons dealing with the conspiracy aspect of the scam. It has charged Lalu, Jagannath Mishra and other politicians of “patronising and elevating” the position of a former animal husbandry official, Ramraj Ram (since deceased), who was allegedly involved in fraudulent withdrawal of money from the treasury and who had been indicted in a CAG report in 1990.

The CBI had filed the chargesheet in the RC-63 A/96 case against a total of 44 persons. While nine died in course of the investigations, two others, Dipesh Chandak, a supplier, and RK Das, an animal husbandry department employee, turned approvers.

The heat generated by the fodder scam had virtually changed the state’s political profile with the JD(U)-BJP alliance using it as the most lethal weapon to nail the 15-year-old Lalu-Rabri regime. Ironically, the ruling establishment now has more of its leaders undergoing trial in the same scandal, but the issues in the state have apparently changed.