A special CBI court today convicted former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad and 15 others in a fodder scam case while acquitting six including another former chief minister Jagannath Mishra.
CBI judge Shivpal Singh pronounced the verdict in a packed courtroom in the case pertaining to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 89.27 lakh from Deoghar Treasury between 1991 and 1994.
Lalu Prasad, the chief of RJD, and other convicts were taken into custody immediately after the pronouncement of the verdict.
A charge sheet 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, a CBI official said.
Meanwhile, senior RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said that the party would move the high court against the order convicting the party chief. He added that the party would go to the people and fight it politically.
"The legal fight will continue. We will move the high court. There is no other alternative," Raghuvansh Prasad told reporters outside the special CBI court in Ranchi reacting to the conviction of the RJD chief.
Soon after the verdict, a post on Lalu Prasad's Twitter handle read, "Powerful people and powerful classes always managed to divide society into ruling and the ruled classes. And whenever anyone from the lower hierarchy challenged this unjust order, they would be deliberately punished."
Senior RJD leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui, a confidant of Prasad, said it was not right to comment on a judgement but the people were discussing how it is freedom for some people and jail for others in the same case.
"The layman is asking why it is jail for some and freedom for others? It is baffling how the BJP and JD(U) had predicted the verdict. This has created confusion among the people also," he said.
The party was waiting to know the quantum of punishment to Prasad to be pronounced on January 3 and would then decide its course of action, Sidiqqui added.