India's former railway minister gets 5 year jail term for corruption

An Indian court Thursday sentenced the country's former railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav to five years in jail and fined him 2.5 million rupees (50,000 U.S. dollars) for embezzling state funds while he was the chief minister of the eastern state of Bihar in the 1990s. The 65-year-old politician is the head of Bihar-based Rashtriya Janata Dal which is a powerful ally of India's ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government. He now stands disqualified as a member of Parliament in the wake of the Supreme Court's recent landmark judgement which bars convicted lawmakers from sitting in legislatures even during an appeal before a higher court. Apart from Yadav, more than 40 others, including politicians and officials, have been sentenced to jail -- with terms ranging up to four years -- for their involvement in the multi-million- dollar fodder scam by a special court of the country's premier probe agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, in the eastern state of Jharkhand's capital Ranchi. The Rashtriya Janata Dal has said that it will appeal against the sentence of their party chief before a higher court. "Laluji is innocent, he is a victim of political conspiracy. The country's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and Nitish Kumar (Bihar's chief minister) are behind this," spokesman Ramkripal Yadav told the media. The scam involved siphoning off from the state exchequer some 9. 5 billion rupees (150 million U.S. dollars) meant for buying fodder for cattle in the 1990s. The case first came to light in 1996 and took more than 17 years for conviction.