Exposure and Investigation
On January 27, 1996, the deputy commissioner of West Singhbhum district, Amit Khare, acted on information to conduct a raid on the offices of the animal husbandry department in the town of Chaibasa in the district under his authority. The documents his team seized, and went public with, conclusively indicated large-scale embezzlement by an organized mafia of officials and businesspeople. Laloo ordered the constitution of a committee to probe the irregularities. There were fears that state police, which is accountable to the state administration, and the probe committee would not investigate the case vigorously, and demands were raised to transfer the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is under federal rather than state jurisdiction. Allegations were also made that several of the probe committee members were themselves complicit in the scam. A public interest litigation was filed with the Supreme Court of India, which led to the court's involvement, and based on the ultimate directions issued by the supreme court, on March 1996, the Bihar High Court ordered that the case be handed over to the CBI.
An inquiry by the CBI began and, within days, the CBI filed a submission to the High Court that Bihar officials and legislators were blocking access to documents that could reveal the existence of a politician-official-business mafia nexus at work. Some legislators of the Bihar Legislative Council responded by claiming the court had been misinformed by the CBI and initiating a privilege motion to discuss possible action against senior figures in the regional headquarters of the CBI, which could proceed similar to a contempt of court proceeding and result in stalling the investigation or even prosecution of the named CBI officials. However, U N Biswas, the regional CBI director, and the other officials tendered an unqualified apology to the Legislative Council, the privilege motion was dropped, and the CBI probe continued. As the investigation proceeded, the CBI unearthed linkages to the serving chief minister of Bihar, Laloo Prasad Yadav and, on May 10, 1997, made a formal request to the federally-appointed governor of Bihar to prosecute Laloo (who is often referred by his first name in Indian media). On the same day, a businessman, Harish Khandelwal, who was one of the accused was found dead on train tracks with a note that stated that he was being coerced by the CBI to turn witness for the prosecution. The CBI rejected the charge and its local director, U N Biswas, kept the appeal to the governor in place.
Read more about this topic: Fodder Scam