The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday seized three acres of land in Patna belonging to former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s family in connection with a money laundering case, reported The Times of India.
According to a document the agency pasted at the site, the plot was provisionally attached on December 9, 2017, on the orders of a senior officer of the Enforcement Directorate. An adjudicating authority upheld the attachment on May 28 this year.
The plots are in the name of Lara Projects LLP, a firm whose managing partner is Yadav’s wife Rabri Devi. The other partners are his sons Tejashwi Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav, and Meridian Construction India Ltd, a firm promoted by Abu Dojana, an MLA of Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, PTI reported.
Meridian Construction was building a shopping mall on the plot, but in May 2017 former Environment Minister Anil Dave ordered the construction to be stopped for alleged violation of norms.
Responding to the Enforcement Directorate’s move, Tejashwi Yadav told ANI, “There were attacks earlier as well. There is nothing new in it, the matter will be clear once it is in the court.”
In July, the Central Bureau of Investigation registered a first information report alleging that Yadav, during his tenure as the railway minister from 2004 to 2009, handed over the maintenance of two Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation hotels to Sujata Hotels after receiving a bribe in the form of land in Patna. The land was received through a “benami” company owned by Sarla Gupta, wife of Prem Chand Gupta, a former Union minister and an RJD MP. It was based on this FIR that the Enforcement Directorate filed a criminal case.
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