Koda shifted back to Birsa Munda jail

Besides Koda, his former cabinet colleague Bhanu Pratap Sahi and his alleged aide, Vijay Joshi, were discharged from Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) on Thursday night, a jail official said here today. They were discharged a day after a team of Indian Army doctors had checked them on Wednesday at Namkom Military Hospital after the high court on December 19 ordered the prison officials to get the trio and ex-minister Kamlesh Singh checked up there.

Singh has not been discharged by RIMS, the official said, but refrained from commenting whether the other three were discharged on the advice of the team of army doctors.

The court`s direction to check them by the military doctors came after a PIL by social activist Durga Oraon moved the court accusing all of them of using their political clout to stay in RIMS on the pretext of being ill instead of staying in jail. While Koda was admitted to RIMS after being allegedly beaten up by the jail inmates, the other three had been admitted for various "ailments".

Oraon had filed the original petition in 2009 accusing Koda and his former cabinet colleagues of amassing wealth disproportionate to their known sources of income between 2005 and 2008 when they were in power, leading to their arrests and subsequent remand in judicial custody.

While Koda and Kamlesh Singh were arrested on November 30, 2009, ex-health minister Bhanu Pratap Sahi surrendered before a special CBI court in connection with a medicine scam this year.