Lalu Prasad Yadav convicted in graft case

A trial court in India convicted senior Indian opposition politician Lalu Prasad Yadav in a corruption case and he was promptly sent to high-security jail.

CBI judge Shivpal Singh in Ranchi, capital city of eastern state of Jharkhand, gave the ruling against Yadav, chief of Rashtriya Janata Dal and former chief minister of Bihar state, in a packed courtroom in the case pertaining to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 89.27 lakh from government treasury between 1991 and 1994.

The quantum of punishment will be pronounced on January 3.

Lalu Prasad and 15 other convicts were taken into custody immediately after the pronouncement of the verdict.

A charge sheet in the case was filed against 38 persons on October 27, 1997. Eleven of them died and three turned approvers while two other accused confessed and were convicted in 2006-07, our New Delhi correspondent reports quoting a CBI official.

Yadav was found guilty of graft charges in one of the six cases lodged against him in the 1996 fodder scam. The court also found 15 others guilty in the case.

On the other hand, the court acquitted six others, including former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra.

Of the six cases in the scam, this was the second in which verdict was pronounced. The RJD chief was also held guilty by a court on September 30, 2013 in the first case but the Supreme Court granted him bail in December that year. In the aftermath of the verdict, he was disqualified from contesting elections.

Lalu Prasad and his wife Rabri Devi had ruled Bihar for about 15 years in the past.