RJD president, Lalu Prasad Yadav was convicted by special CBI judge, Sudhanshu Kumar Shashi, at Ranchi for his role in fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 139.5 crores from Doranda treasury during his tenure as chief minister of undivided Bihar.
He is all set to get more than three year's sentence as all the 38 other accused who were awarded three years sentence were released on bail by the court.
There were 99 accused in the case, of which 24 were acquitted by the court today. CBI had registered the case for Doranda treasury scam on April 16, 1996, and produced 575 witnesses and presented 14 box loads of documents.
Lalu Prasad Yadav last week had wished to contest the elections as he had nearly completed sentences ranging between three years and seven years in four other cases since 2013, when he was sentenced first to three years jail term.
Lalu who was in Patna before leaving for Ranchi had presided over the national executive of RJD and announced the names of candidates for 24 seats of local bodies constituencies to fill up vacancies to Bihar Vidhan Parishad.
He had told his workers to be ready for a long-drawn battle and indicated he may enter Rajya Sabha in July as RJD MLAs can help elect two candidates to the Upper House. He had been disqualified as a member of Lok Sabha in 2013 following his first conviction for three years. His disqualified continued following a series of sentences for more than three years.
Lalu's eldest daughter, Misa Bharti, a member of Rajya Sabha, former cabinet colleagues of Lalu, Abdul Bari Siddiqui and Shyam Rajak accompanied Lalu from Jharkhand state guest house to the court.
He was granted bail in the cases as he had completed half of the jail term in Chaibasa, Deoghar, Dumka treasuries cases.
In Chaibasa case, he along with 44 other accused was awarded five years jail term for Rs 37 crores scam, in the Deoghar treasury case, he was sentenced for 3.6 years along with 38 others for Rs 84 lakhs fraudulent withdrawal, in Chaibasa treasury case he along with 56 others got jail term for five years for Rs 33 crores withdrawal. He is facing trial in another treasury scam at Banka treasury in Bihar.
