A Patna court on Tuesday pronounced a one-year sentence to Rashtriya Janata Dadal (RJD) national vice president Shivanand Tiwary in a criminal defamation case. The defamation suit was filed by Bihar Minister Sanjay Kumar Jha five years ago.
The court also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on Tiwari, a former state minister himself.
According to Jha's counsel Madhukar Anand, "The court has granted provisional bail to Shivanand Tiwary, and gave him 30 days to appeal against the order".
Jha, who holds key portfolios like Water Resources and Information and Public Relations in the Nitish Kumar government, had filed the petition way back in 2018 when he was a national general secretary of the JD(U).
What was the matter?
Jha had moved the court against Tiwary over his remarks about former's close relationship with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Kumar has realigned with the RJD, which he had dumped in 2017, and hinted that he was now willing to pass on the mantle to his deputy Tejashwi Yadav, whose father Lalu Prasad heads the party.
Tiwary, a veteran socialist leader who has known both Prasad and Kumar for nearly five decades, has been a member of the parties floated by the two leaders at different points of time.
(With PTI inputs)
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