Fodder scam verdict: December a month of setbacks for Lalu Prasad Yadav as CBI readies chargesheet in IRCTC graft case

The month of December and of all the days 23 December has been haunting Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Lalu Prasad Yadav, who claims to be a Shiva bhakt and believes in numerology, for the last 40 years. [caption id=“attachment_3786029” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav. PTI[/caption] Yadav started his political career from his college days and joined Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement against the then Indira Gandhi government which imposed Emergency. Yadav was arrested in Patna under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) and spent the entire December that year in Jail which prompted him to name his newly born daughter as Misa Bharti. His smooth political career, however, was disrupted when his name figured in the Fodder Scam in 1996. The CBI filed the chargesheet on 23 July, 1997. After spending four months in jail in 1997, Yadav was released on 12 December. Yadav was arrested again on 28 October, 1998, in another case related to the fodder scam, but he was released in December. That month, more cases were registered against him. But despite that Yadav won the Madhepura seat in the General Election to Lok Sabha in 1998 and the Saran parliamentary constituency in the 2004 General Election to Lok Sabha. He became the railway minister in the UPA-I government. In 2013, a special CBI court convicted Yadav in the 1996 fodder scam case and was put behind bars. The CBI verdict ended his political career as he had to resign from the Lok Sabha and was barred from fighting elections. Though Yadav was released on bail by the Supreme court in December 2013, the verdict made a dent into his political career as his party (RJD) was limited to just four parliamentary seats in the 2014 General Election to Lok Sabha. The month of December is again haunting Yadav as the CBI court is all set to pronounce its judgment in the Deogarh treasury case related to the fodder scam. But that’s not all. Yadav is facing another corruption case for awarding a tender for maintaining two Railway hotels to a company in lieu of about two acres of prime land in Patna. The CBI is expected to file a chargesheet in December. Click here for LIVE updates on the fodder scam verdict