The former Jharkhand Chief Minister, Madhu Koda, who was granted 21 days provisional bail by the Jharkhand High Court on April 17, surrendered at a court in Ranchi on Friday.
Embroiled in a case related to irregularities in the allotment of rural electrification work to infrastructure firm IVRCL under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana when he was Minister for Power, Mr. Koda was given bail to attend to his ailing mother.
“Madhu Koda had applied for bail [to attend to the] treatment of his mother, who is very ill and was admitted to Apollo Hospital in Ranchi. She has now been shifted to Fortis Hospital in Delhi, where she may undergo an angiography, and Mr. Koda returned from Delhi two days back to surrender [before] the court at the end of the bail period,” said Mr. Koda’s lawyer Vishwajeet Mukherjee.
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Mr. Koda who was Chief Minister between 2006 and 2008, supported by the Congress, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, is an accused in five cases in an alleged Rs.4,000-crore scam. He has been in jail since November 2009, after the Income Tax Department conducted raids on his premises.
“Mr. Koda has been in jail in this particular case since October 2011 and the Central Bureau of Investigation is yet to file a charge sheet. On Binod Sinha’s [a co-accused] appeal, the Supreme Court had asked the CBI to file a charge sheet by [the] end of three months and one-and-a-half months have gone by already. We plan to apply for bail again by the end of today,” said Mr. Mukherjee. Mr. Koda is also accused in cases related to alleged money laundering, alleged violation of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, alleged disproportionate assets related to an alleged bribe taken for recommending a mining lease, alleged acceptance of bribe for the appointment of R.K. Sinha as chairman of the Jharkhand Pollution Control Board and alleged violation of the Income Tax Act by not filing income tax returns.