On Friday, the Jharkhand High Court granted bail to the jailed Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief, Lalu Prasad Yadav, in one of the fodder scam cases on the grounds that he had served half of the five-year sentence. in that case.
However, the court order does not pave the way for the release of Bihar’s former prime minister from jail, as he has been serving a sentence in another fodder scam case in which he was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Yadav has been in custodial treatment at Ranchi’s Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) for more than two years.
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He was granted bail by the Aparesh Kumar Singh court of law on the condition that he provide two bonds of Rs 50,000 each and deposit Rs 2 lakh of the amount of the Rs 10 lakh fine imposed on him along with the judgment.
However, the bank requested responses from the inspector general (IG), the prison and the superintendent of Ranchi Birsa Munda Central Jail (BMCJ) to provide details of the people who met Yadav at the hospital in the last three months and clarify if these people had the permit requirements according to the jail manual.
The bank also sought a report from the RIMS medical superintendent on Yadav’s current health. He published the matter for an additional hearing on November 7.
Yadav had suffered a major shock in the forage scam case on September 30, 2013, when a trial court in Ranchi found him guilty in the first of six cases against him. The sentence imposed five years of prison to him, the disqualification of the Parliament and the prohibition to participate in the elections. The Supreme Court released him on bail in December of that year.
On December 23, 2017, he was convicted in three other forage scam cases in quick succession. Since then, he has been in jail.
Of these three cases, he was released on bail in one of them last year on the basis that he had served half of the 3.5 years in prison that he was granted.
The high court granted Yadav bail on Friday in the aforementioned case, which relates to the fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 33.13 crore from the Chaibasa treasury against the annual allocation of Rs 7.10 lakh for the year 1992-93.
Of the four cases in which he has been convicted so far and sentenced to different prison terms, he has now obtained bail in three of them.
But in the fourth and final case, the head of the RJD faces 14 years in prison: seven under the sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and another seven under the Prevention of Corruption Act (PC). The court of first instance had expressly said that both sentences would be executed consecutively.
Yadav’s lawyers hope that the higher court will overturn this decision and allow the two sentences to run simultaneously. If that happens, half of that seven-year sentence will be completed on November 10.
Yadav’s lawyer, Prabhat Kumar, said: “The higher court, in matters of other convicts in the same case, suspended the sentence and considered a maximum (of 0 seven years in prison for calculating half the sentence for the purposes of bond. In such a situation, it is completing half of the custody on November 10 “
“We await his release from jail after November 10. We will submit another request for bail only in that month, “he added.
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