NEW DELHI: Ahead of the Bihar assembly elections, RJD leader Lalu Prasad suffered a setback on Friday with SC declining to stay ongoing trial proceedings against him in land-for-job ‘scam’ cases, in which CBI charge-sheeted him for allegedly securing plots of land from those who got jobs in the railways during 2004-09 when he was railway minister.When senior advocate Kapil Sibal attempted to discredit the cases against Prasad, lodged in 2022 after more than a decade of the alleged ‘scam’, by terming it as political vendetta, additional solicitor general S V Raju told a bench of Justices M M Sundresh and N Kotiswar Singh that Prasad’s petition for quashing of FIRs in the cases is still pending in the Delhi HC and that the former railway minister has challenged an interim order of HC.Though Sibal maintained with vehemence that “it is the most unfortunate case” and accused CBI of starting a probe without mandatory sanction under section 17-A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, the bench said, “We will not stay the trial. However, we can direct the trial court to dispense with Prasad’s personal presence. Let HC decide the main issue.”After investigations, CBI on June 7 last year filed the third and final chargesheet before a special court in Delhi against Prasad, his wife Rabri Devi, son Tej Pratap Yadav and daughter Hema Yadav, and others. The case against Prasad and his family members is related to appointments made to Group D positions in 11 Railway Zones between 2004 and 2009.
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