Ranchi, (Samajweekly) A sort of dubious record was created in Jharkhand on Monday when a CBI court in Ranchi convicted Bandhu Tirkey, a minister in the former Madhu Koda government and sentenced him to three years imprisonment and a Rs 3 lakh fine in a disproportionate assets case.
With this, one-third of the ministers of the then Koda government have now been convicted of corruption and criminal charges. Also, 50 per cent of the ministers of this government had to go to jail because of criminal cases.
Independent MLA Madhu Koda was the Chief Minister from September 18, 2006 to August 2008. He also had 12 ministers in his government. Out of these, six were charged with acquiring assets disproportionate to their known sources of income. These include, besides Koda, Enos Ekka, Harinarayan Rai, Tirkey, Bhanu Pratap Shahi and Kamlesh Singh.
Koda was found guilty in the much talked about coal scam of Rs 4,000 crore. On December 16, 2017, Justice Bharat Parashar of the special CBI court, Patiala House, Delhi, sentenced him to three years jail. Along with this, a fine of Rs 25 lakh was also imposed on him. Koda is now out on bail.
The charges of corruption and disproportionate assets were proved against former minister Rai and in 2016, the CBI court sentenced him to five years in prison and imposed a fine of Rs 50,000. He challenged the decision in the High Court, which upheld the lower court verdict.
Ekka, who was Rural Development Minister in the Koda government, was sentenced to seven years imprisonment and fined Rs 2 crore on April 23, 2020 by the court of Special ED Judge A.K. Mishra in a money laundering case. Prior to this, he was also sentenced to life imprisonment on July 3, 2018 for the murder of a teacher.
The hearing is going on in the court against Shahi in separate cases of a drug scam and disproportionate assets.
Similarly, the trial is also going on against Kamlesh Singh, the sixth minister of the then Koda government, in the criminal case of disproportionate assets. All these six former ministers have had to go to jail several times before.
