Lalu Yadav is serving a four-year prison sentence in Jharkhand for corruption.
Ranchi:
The bail hearing of former Bihar chief minister Lalu Yadav in a fodder scam case, to be addressed today, has been postponed for another six weeks.
Reports suggest that the hearing was postponed because Lalu Yadav has not served half his sentence, a requirement for his early release. There is a deficit of 40 days.
The hearing was previously postponed because the CBI failed to present its arguments to the Jharkhand High Court.
Lalu Yadav, who is serving a four-year prison sentence for corruption, has been granted bail in many other cases involving the scam of government funds for livestock feed.
This is the last case against Lalu Yadav and he expects to be released on bail this time.
At a hearing last month, his lawyer Kapil Sibal had accused the CBI of “deliberately delaying the release of bail.”
The “Dumka Treasury Case” involves Rs 3.5 million taken from the Dumka treasury by officials of the Bihar Department of Livestock between 1991 and 1996, when Lalu Yadav was Chief Minister.
In October, Mr. Yadav was released on bail in connection with the Chaibasa Treasury case, also related to the forage scam. He remains in jail pending the hearing on the Dumka Treasury case.
Rashtriya leader Janata Dal has been in jail since December 2017 after being convicted. He has served most of his jail sentence in Jharkhand at the Rajendra Institute for Medical Sciences (RIMS) hospital.
In his absence, his son Tejashwi Yadav has led the RJD and is credited with the party’s strong performance in the recent Bihar elections. This was the first time in 40 years that Lalu Yadav missed a state election campaign.
Tejashwi Yadav’s party emerged as the largest, but the opposition alliance did not reach a majority.
Tejashwi Yadav had said that his father would be released on November 9 after the bail hearing and that it would be the “dismissal” of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar the following day. But Nitish Kumar retained power, reinforced by the account of the ally BJP, with his own party in third place.
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