Fodder scam: Politicians connived to loot public money, says CBI court

Ranchi: A special CBI Court, which convicted former Bihar chief ministers Lalu Prasad, Jagannath Mishra and 43 others in the fodder scam, today said that politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen connived to loot public money. “High level politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen connived together and entered into a criminal conspiracy for fraudulent withdrawal of public money by way of forging several documents in virtually making a loot of public money with only one Hidden Agenda of syphoning the public money from Govt.- Treasury by fraudulent withdrawal,” Judge Pravas Kumar Singh said in his 475-page verdict. [caption id=“attachment_1150959” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. AFP[/caption] Observing that everyone had heard that God was omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, the judge said, “Now, we have seen that there is a constant and continuous attempt being made to replace the word God by the word corruption.” The verdict said that these cases related to a series of orchestrated fraudulent acts by which a staggeringly huge amount of public money was plundered after creating fake bills and other false documents, with the active participation or connivance of several high ups in the state administration and succeeded in “draining out Rs 900 crores and odd”. PTI