IRCTC scam: ED attaches Patna land of Lalu family

“Pressure on central agencies from above to act,” Tejashwi Yadav said

The Enforcement Directorate Friday attached a three-acre plot worth Rs 44.7 crore in Patna, which allegedly belongs to RJD chief Lalu Prasad’s family and where one of the biggest malls in the city was to come up. The property, provisionally attached under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, is also the subject of a CBI inquiry and members of the family have been questioned by central agencies.

Bihar Opposition leader and Lalu Prasad’s son Tejashwi Yadav, who is one of the persons named in a CBI FIR filed in July, and on the basis of which the ED registered a case, hit back, saying the central agencies were “under pressure to act”. “It (the attachment of land) was very much expected. There has been pressure on central agencies from above to act. But we have nothing to fear as we have not done anything wrong. We have been duly cooperating with the central agencies. They have questioned us several times…. Let the CBI file a chargesheet if it has facts,” he said.

In July, the CBI searched the residence of Lalu Prasad and his wife Rabri Devi after filing an FIR against the couple, Tejashwi Yadav and five others in a 2006 case of IRCTC transferring two railway hotels, one each at Ranchi and Puri, to Sujata Hotel Pvt Ltd, in alleged contravention of tender norms, during the tenure of Lalu Prasad as Union Railway Minister.

According to the CBI FIR, the owners of Sujata Hotel Pvt Ltd had, a year before being given charge of the two railway hotels, allegedly transferred a prime three-acre plot along Bailey Road of Patna, to Delight Marketing Pvt Ltd, a company owned by RJD leader P C Gupta’s wife Sarla Gupta. Control of Delight Marketing, in turn, was transferred to Tejashwi Yadav and Rabri Devi and the company was renamed Lara Projects LLP, the CBI claimed.

Others named in the FIR include Vijay Kochhar and Vinay Kochhar, directors of Sujata Hotel Pvt Ltd; Sarla Gupta, director of Delight Marketing Pvt Ltd and P K Goel, then managing director of IRCTC.