(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Former Indian minister and regional politician Lalu Prasad Yadav was found guilty of corruption by a special trial court on Saturday.
The court in the eastern city of Ranchi convicted 16 people, including Yadav, in a "fodder scam" case dating to the early 1990s, when he was chief minister of Bihar state.
Yadav and several officials embezzled state funds totalling nearly 9 million rupees (140,580 dollars) destined for cattle fodder between 1991 and 1994.
Judge Shivpal Singh would pronounce the sentence on January 3, the spokesman of Yadav's party, Manoj Jha, told reporters.
Yadav, a former federal railways minister and leader of the regional Rashtriya Janata Dal party, was sent to jail soon after the verdict.
Yadav faced accusations that, as chief minister, he kept the file for an inquiry against the scandal's mastermind pending for 16 months and gave extensions to tainted officials despite objections, broadcaster NDTV reported.
The prosecuting agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, had argued that Yadav was aware of the scandal but allowed the looting to continue by his inaction, the report said.
This is the second fodder case Yadav has been convicted in.
A total of six such cases are part of a larger scandal that involved the misappropriation of some 10 billion rupees.
The first case in 2013 cost him his parliamentary seat and disqualified him from contesting elections. Yadav spent two months in jail before he was granted bail in that case by the Supreme Court.
Jha accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of foisting criminal cases on Yadav and said that they would challenge the verdict in a higher court.
In a series of tweets, Yadav accused the BJP of carrying out a political vendetta against him, adding "In [the] end Truth will win."
The special court acquitted another former Bihar chief minister, Jagannath Mishra, and six others in the trial lasting two decades.
There were a total of 34 people accused in the case.
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