Ranchi/Patna, July 1: Jharkhand High Court today dismissed Lalu Prasad’s appeal to transfer a fodder scam case pending against him before a CBI judge, dealing a body blow to the former chief minister who is eyeing a political comeback in Bihar.
The court rejected Lalu’s apprehensions of bias — the RJD chief had contended that he did not “expect justice” from CBI judge P.K. Singh, who is a relative of Bihar education minister P.K. Shahi. Justice R.R. Prasad of the high court in Ranchi said that Singh’s relation with Shahi could not be the sole ground for transferring the case.
The ruling leaves Lalu with virtually no room to avoid the final verdict in the fodder scam case on July 15.
Justice Prasad, who also observed that a mere apprehension could not be the basis for transferring the case, however, gave 10 days’ time to Lalu’s counsel to add to his arguments, if any.
The contentious case, RC 20 A/96, relates to illegal withdrawal of Rs 35.66 crore from the Chaibasa treasury with the alleged sanction of then chief minister Lalu and has been pending since 1996, long before the creation of Jharkhand.
Besides Lalu, other top Bihar politicians accused in the case include JD(U) MP from Jehanabad Jagdish Sharma, senior JD(U) leader and former chief minister Jagannath Mishra and former RJD MP R.K. Rana. Last month, Rana, a key aide of Lalu, was sentenced to five years in prison in one of the fodder scam cases.
The CBI case (RC 20 A/96) has been a nemesis for the RJD boss. It was this very case which cost his chief ministerial chair in July 1997. A CBI court had then issued a warrant of arrest against Lalu in the case, forcing him to demit office and install on the chair his wife Rabri Devi.
Lalu’s petition in Jharkhand High Court was argued by senior advocate Ram Jethmalani, who tried to convince the bench that since the sister of the CBI judge was married to P.K. Shahi’s cousin, the Bihar minister was close to Singh.
But the court wasn’t impressed. “A mere relation with Shahi, which is not direct, is not enough to hold that the judge would have a biased approach,” Justice Prasad ruled.
Jethmalani contended that judge Singh had earlier rejected some petitions filed on behalf of Lalu. These were challenged in the high court and were subsequently set aside.
Justice Prasad observed that rejection of a petition by a lower court had a remedy before the high court. “But holding that since the petitions were rejected, the lower court is biased will open a floodgate of transfer petitions,” he said.
Decimated in the last Assembly elections, Lalu has been hoping for a political comeback following the split between the JD(U) and the BJP. He got a boost when the RJD won the Maharajganj Lok Sabha byelection — in which Shahi was the JD(U) candidate — by a massive margin. The RJD chief went on to describe the Maharajganj bypoll as the “semi-final” to the Lok Sabha elections due next year.
Lalu’s rivals now say the RJD chief would find it difficult to come out of the legal quagmire. “Lalu will find it hard to enter the final in case he is convicted on July 15,” said Lallan Singh, JD(U) MP and one of main petitioners against Lalu in the fodder scam cases.
