Spl court awards1-year jail termto Shivanand

PATNA: A special court in Patna on Tuesday awarded one-year imprisonment to RJD national vice-president Shivanand Tiwari in a criminal defamation suit filed by the state's water resources department and IPRD minister Sanjay Kumar Jha five years ago.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs1 lakh on Tiwari, a former MP and minister.

Jha's counsel Madhukar Anand told the media that the court also granted provisional bail to Shivanand and gave him 30 days to appeal against the order. Jha had filed the petition way back in 2018 against Tiwari, while taking exception to the comments the RJD leader had made about his close relationship with chief minister Nitish Kumar. TNN