Patna: With his entire family now caught in legal troubles, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad has given up his craving for non-vegetarian dishes, which he loved to cook himself.
Party insiders said the RJD chief has given up his indulgence on the advice of astrologer Shankar Charan Tripathi who was recently appointed as spokesperson of the party.
“He has been told that the entire problems will vanish from his family if he quits non-vegetarian foods. He is now strictly following the advice and has not eaten such foods in the past one fortnight,” a party insider said.
Reports said that although Lalu favoured all kinds of non-veg dishes, he especially loved tucking into fish caught from the local rivers.
Previously too he had quit non-veg foods while he was lodged in jail in connection with the fodder scam case following what he claims was a “divine order”. It was during his stay in jail that the Hindu deity Shiva visited him in his dream and ordered him to quit such foods to overcome his legal worries, he had claimed at the time. He followed the “divine instructions” but, upon coming out of jail on bail, his non-veg cravings got the better of him and so have his legal problems.
Currently, almost all members of Lalu’s family are facing multiple corruption charges for which they have to routinely present themselves before the investigating agencies as well as the courts. According to his astrologer, this could be a fallout of Lalu’s going back on his earlier promise not to eat non-veg foods.
“You haven’t done the right thing by breaking the promise you made to Shiva earlier. You must quit non-veg foods instantly to earn his favour,” was how the astrologer advised Lalu.
While Prasad himself is an accused in the multi-million dollar fodder scam, his wife Rabri Devi and younger son Tejashwi Yadav have been named as accused in the land-for-railway hotels scandal currently being investigagted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and other investigating agencies. Only yesterday, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) confiscated the three-acre plots owned by Lalu’s family. The family was constructing what it claimed the “Biggest mall of Bihar” when it was seized well before its completion.
Likewise, the ED has also confiscated the Delhi farmhouses of Lalu’s daughter Misa Bharti, an RJD parliamentarian, in the multi-billion money laundering case while the Income tax Department has attached another three separate land plots of his wife Rabri Devi and daughter Hema Yadav in Patna. In all, a total of 14 properties of Lalu and his family have been seized by the investigating agencies over the past three months.
Apart from these, Lalu himself is currently required to routinely appear before a special CBI court in Ranchi which is hearing the fodder scam cases pending against him. His problems have multiplied with the Supreme Court directing the trial courts to conclude the trials in all fodder scam cases within nine month.
The BJP has been demanding that the Election Commission cancel the House membership of Prasad’s elder son Tej Partap Yadav for allegedly hiding the benami properties in his poll affidavits. The story does not end here. Prasad’s sons-in-law too are facing corruption charges.
