Veteran Indian party leader convicted in old corruption case

NEW DELHI, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) -- Lalu Prasad Yadav, former chief minister of India's eastern state of Bihar, was on Saturday convicted by a special court in eastern city of Ranchi in a corruption case.

The sentence will be pronounced on Jan. 3.

Lalu is the president of the political party Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and two-time chief minister of Bihar between 1990 and 1997. He was India's railway minister from 2004 to 2009, when he emerged as one of the key allies in the then Congress-led alliance government headed by ex-premier Manmohan Singh.

Corruption allegations related to a fodder scam, which continued for several years from even prior to Lalu's term as chief minister in 1990, were levelled against him in 1998 when he stepped down as chief minister and installed his wife as his successor.

Lalu has been both a popular and a controversial politician in India. His political career spans for over four decades. He was one of the youngest members of parliament in 1977 when he won as an MP of the lower house of the Indian parliament "Lok Sabha".

He faces five cases in the fodder scam of which four are pending. The current case pertains to the alleged fraudulent withdrawal of 8.45 million rupees (132,000 U.S. dollars) from a government treasury between 1994 and 1996. There are 34 persons accused in this particular case, including another former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra.

In one of the corruption cases, Yadav was earlier sentenced to five years in jail and fined 2.5 million rupees (39,050 U.S. dollars) for fraudulent withdrawal of 375 million rupees (5.86 million U.S. dollars) from a government treasury. However, the Supreme Court of India granted him bail in December 2013. Enditem