A Delhi court on Tuesday refused to cancel the bail granted to Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav in a case of alleged corruption in the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, reported PTI.
On September 17, the Central Bureau of Investigation had urged the court to cancel his bail citing comments made by him at a press conference. The central agency alleged that Yadav had warned it not to investigate the case. The comments violated Yadav’s bail conditions and were made in an attempt to subvert the process of law and thwart the investigation, the CBI had argued.
The court had issued a notice to the Rashtriya Janata Dal leader seeking his response by September 28.
On Tuesday, Special Judge Geetanjali Goel said that there were no specific grounds to cancel the bail granted to Yadav. However, she warned Yadav to be more careful while making statements and choose appropriate words, PTI reported.
A detailed order on the matter will be passed later, the court said.
Yadav’s counsel had told the court that the Rashtriya Janata Dal leader belonged to an Opposition party and it was his duty to question the wrongdoings.
“The CBI and ED [Enforcement Directorate] are being misused by the present government...All opposition parties are feeling this,” the counsel told the court.
The case
The IRCTC case pertains to alleged irregularities in a tender awarded to a private company called Sujata Hotels to develop and operate two railway hotels in Ranchi and Puri in 2005, when Tejashwi Yadav’s father Lalu Prasad Yadav was the Union railways minister.
In return, Lalu Prasad Yadav allegedly received a three-acre plot worth Rs 45 crore through a benami company owned by the wife of a Rashtriya Janata Dal MP.
The term benami refers to a transaction or contract held or carried out in the name of someone other than the person who has financed it.
The plot was also shown in official records as agricultural land, which caused losses to the state exchequer as agricultural land is exempt from certain taxes, according to the Central Bureau of Investigation. After Lalu Yadav demitted office in 2009, the shares of the benami company were transferred to Tejashwi Yadav and his mother, former chief minister Rabri Devi between 2010 and 2014, the agency alleged.
The CBI launched an investigation into the case in July 2017 and had filed a chargesheet against Lalu Prasad Yadav, his wife and son, and 11 others in the case in April 2018.
Tejashwi Yadav and his mother Rabri Devi were granted bail in the case in October 2018 while Lalu Yadav was granted bail in January 2019.
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