Lalu Prasad on his way to the jail last Monday.
Former Bihar chief minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad, jailed last week for five years in one of the five fodder scam cases against him, is likely to appear today through video conferencing in two other cases before a CBI court in Ranchi.
The two cases relate to illegal withdrawal of nearly Rs 3.5 crore for fictitious medicines and fodder for cattle from Dumka and Deoghar treasuries in the 1990s. Mr Prasad was the chief minister of the then undivided Bihar. (
The rise and fall of a maverick politician)
The bulk of the CBI's case against Mr Prasad is that as chief minister, he attempted to suppress evidence of corruption in the Animal Husbandry Department and protect key officials involved in the Rs 950 crore embezzlement.
Mr Prasad also stands disqualified as an MP following a recent Supreme Court ruling.
In a resolution passed yesterday, his party, the RJD, reposed its faith in the collective leadership of the former chief minister and his wife Rabri Devi to take the party into the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
When Mr Prasad was forced to step down as chief minister in 1997 after being arrested and jailed in connection with the fodder scam, he shocked one and all by installing his wife, then a political novice, as his replacement.
Meanwhile, the high profile inmate in Ranchi's Birsa Munda Central jail had a surprise visitor on Sunday when President Pranab Mukherjee's son and Congress MP Abhijeet Mukherjee spent over half an hour with the RJD chief in jail. The visit was described as a 'courtesy call'. (
Read: Abhijeet Mukherjee pays 'courtesy visit' in jail)
The RJD is a close ally of the Congress; it does not participate in the ruling coalition at the centre, but lends external supports with four Lok Sabha MPs.