According to agency officials, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has summoned Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav today in connection with a land-for-jobs case.
According to authorities, this is his second summons, the first being issued on February 4. The summons comes a day after the Enforcement Directorate raided the national capital house of Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav in connection with the case.
According to them, the ED team departed after more than 11 hours of interviewing the RJD leader at his house in New Delhi.
In the suspected land-for-jobs scam, the ED also conducted searches on various relatives of former Railway Minister Lalu Prasad across Delhi, the National Capital Region (NCR), and Bihar.
According to reports, the searches were carried out at the homes of Lalu Prasad’s daughter Misa Bharti and others in Delhi, as well as RJD leader and former Legislator Abu Dojana in Bihar.
After submitting an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) and taking notice of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) case against Lalu Prasad in the issue, the ED conducted these searches under the terms of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
These searches were conducted by the government agency just days after a CBI team questioned Lalu Prasad in connection with the land-for-jobs scam.
The CBI questioned Lalu Prasad for over five hours in two sessions on Tuesday.
The CBI also questioned Lalu Prasad’s wife, former Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi, for more than five hours on Monday at her Patna (Bihar) house.
The CBI has already filed a charge sheet in the case against Lalu Prasad, Rabri Devi, and 14 others on criminal conspiracy and Prevention of Corruption Act violations. Last month, a Delhi court summoned Lalu Prasad and the other defendants to appear in court on March 15.
So far, the CBI has detained three persons in connection with the case: Bhola Yadav, an official on special duty to Lalu Prasad when he was railway minister; Hridayanand Chaudhary, a railway employee and accused beneficiary of the scam; and Dharmendra Rai, another suspected beneficiary.
The CBI claims that between 2004 and 2009, when Lalu Prasad was the Railway Minister, he and some of his family members received plots of property as bribes for positions at the Indian Railways. In conjunction with the investigation, the agency also conducted searches at roughly two dozen places in August of last year.
