The ED issued fresh summons to RJD chief Lalu Prasad and son Tejashwi Yadav to appear for investigation at Patna Office in regarding with the alleged railways-land-for-jobs money laundering case, officials told news agency PTI.
The law enforcement agency has asked Lalu Prasad to depose on January 29, and Tejashwi Yadav to next day on January 30. A ED team visited the official residence of Lalu Prasad’s wife and former Bihar CM Rabri Devi in Patna to handover the summons, reported PTI citing officials.
Earlier, the father-son due had skipped the previous summons of the ED in the case. However, this time, the due have been asked to depose at the ED office on Bank Road in the state capital Patna .The alleged fraud was done during the tenure when Lalu Prasad Yadav was the railway minister in the Congress led UPA-1 government.
What is land-for-jobs fraud?
The “land-for-jobs” fraud first came to public in 2009 after the new UPA government was formed and Yadav lost his seat as Union Railway Minister as his party wasn’t part of the new government. The CBI inquiry into the fraud was started by the new Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee after allegations were made against Yadav. The inquiry was restarted in September 2021.
After a preliminary inquiry, the agency filed an FIR in 2022 against Yadav, his wife and his daughters Misa Bharti and Hema Yadav. The CBI alleged that Yadav and his associates had taken huge amounts of land from people who were given jobs in the Indian Railways. According to the allegations, the land was given to Yadav’s family members and close associates.
The inquiry also revealed that many of the appointments made by Yadav’s office were based on favouritism and nepotism, and not on merit. The CBI claimed that Yadav had heavely misused his position as the Railway Minister to benefit his family members and associates.
In the FIR, the CBI alleged that between 2004 and 2009, several residents of Patna were appointed as substitutes for various Group-D posts. These posts had no public advertisements and the appointments were against norms and procedures for recruitment. These people were allotted jobs in different zones of the railways located in Mumbai, Jabalpur, Kolkata, Jaipur and Hajipur.
The CBI accused the Yadav family of acquiring over 1 lakh sq ft of land by the fraud at a cost of just ₹26 lakh, despite the market value of the land being over ₹4.39 crore.
