Anand ST Das By

Express News Service

PATNA: Sitting MLA Raj Ballabh Yadav of Bihar’s main Opposition party RJD was on Saturday convicted of raping a minor girl at his residence nearly three years ago. He is set to become the second sitting RJD legislator to be disqualified from the Assembly due to conviction in a court.

A special court in Patna convicted Yadav, the MLA representing Nawada constituency, for the crime he committed at his residence on the night of February 6, 2016. Judge Parashuram Yadav found him guilty under various sections of the POCSO Act and IPC. Five other people – four women and a man – were also convicted in the case for facilitating the rape.

The court, set up for trial of cases against MPs and MLAs, will pronounce the quantum of punishment in the case on December 21. Prosecution officials said the MLA, currently lodged in a jail in Nalanda district, is likely to get imprisonment for life.

The school-going girl was taken to the MLA’s house at Pathara English village by a woman close to him and put in his custody for the night. The girl said in her complaint, lodged with police three days later, that the woman, Sulekha Devi, actively facilitated the rape act and later offered to give her a good mobile phone in return for keeping silent about the incident. Devi, two of her daughters, a son-in-law and her mother were convicted for conspiracy.

Raj Ballabh Yadav, who the victim had identified in a photograph, had evaded arrest and surrendered in court only after police started confiscating some of his properties. His crime and evasion of arrest for a month had become a major friction point between RJD and JD(U), which together ran Bihar’s Grand Alliance government led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at the time.

RJD legislator Mohammad Ilyas Hussain, a former minister who represents the Dehri Assembly segment, was disqualified from the Assembly last month after a CBI court in Ranchi sentenced him to five years in jail in September in connection with the bitumen scam of the early 1990s when Lalu Prasad Yadav was undivided Bihar’s chief minister.