Patna: Beleagured Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad is being extensively quizzed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the infamous land-for-railway hotels scam.
Prasad is accused of awarding the contract for maintenance of two railway hotels to a private company during his previous tenure as the federal railway minister after getting a bribe in the form of three acres of prime land located in Patna.
Reports said Prasad accompanied by his eldest daughter and parliamentarian Misa Bharti on Thursday reached the agency’s headquarters in Delhi at around 11 in the morning. While he was taken to the investigation office for questioning, his daughter was told to wait in the lobby, CBI authorities said.
The quizzing was in progress till the time of filing of the story. The fresh quizzing by the CBI comes almost two decades after he was questioned by agency sleuths in the multi-million dollar fodder scam. In a strange coincidence the RJD president is being investigated by the same CBI officer — Rakesh Ashthana, who had earlier arrested him in the fodder scam in 1997.
The CBI is set to also question Lalu’s son, Tejashwi Yadav in the same land-for-hotel scam. Tejashwi was the deputy chief minister in the erstwhile Grand Alliance government before chief minister Nitish Kumar ditched it to form his new government with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in July.
The case against the father-son duo was registered on July 7. The same day, the CBI conducted raids at the residence of the RJD president in Patna while he was away to appear before the court in one of the fodder scam cases.
The land-for-hotel scam involves facilitating contract to a private company to run railway hotels in lieu of getting three-acre land plot in Patna. According to the CBI, the three acres-land plot valued at Rs320 million (Dh18 million) was given for a mere Rs5.4 million to the family of the RJD chief.
Prasad’s family and the RJD allege the case is politically-motivated and it was all done just to “prepare ground” for Janata Dal United leader Nitish Kumar to break alliance with the Grand Alliance and return to the BJP camp.
“Nitish Kumar knows it very well that Lalu Prasad is a major challenge for him in Bihar and that his political career can’t be secure as long as the latter is active in state politics. So, he has been conspiring against the RJD president in collusion with the BJP,” alleged RJD’s national vice-president Shivanand Tiwari on Thursday.
