by Alok Mohit
PATNA: Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday defended his ally, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad, and his family after the CBI filed a chargesheet against them in the alleged job-for-land scam in the railways.
The premier investigative agency had on Friday charged Lalu and 15 others, including his wife Rabri Devi, daughters Misa Bharti and Hema Yadav, in connection with the scam during the RJD chief’s tenure as Railway Minister in the Congress-led UPA government between 2004 to 2009.
“There’s nothing in the case,” Kumar told reporters here before leaving for Sitab Diara, the birthplace of Jayaprakash Narayan on the occasion of his death anniversary.
“What happened five years ago? We had split up (with RJD). Nothing occurred (in this case). I’ve seen everything; nothing is there. They’ve restarted it now as we’re no longer with the BJP,” said Kumar.
Deputy chief minister and Prasad’s son Tejashwi Yadav, whose name had cropped up in another case, leading the JD(U) leader to walk out of the alliance the RJD in 2017, was by his side.
The central investigating agency had filed FIR on May 18 against Prasad, Rabri Devi, both former Bihar chief minister, and two of their daughters–Misa Bharti and Hema Yadav– and 12 people who were hired by the railways. The majority of them are currently out on bail.
The CBI officials said Prasad had between 2004 and 2009 obtained “pecuniary advantages” in the form of the transfer of landed property in the name of his family members in return for the appointment of substitutes in Group “D” post in different zones of railways located in Mumbai, Jabalpur, Kolkata, Jaipur and Hajipur. “Over 1 lakh square feet of land belonging to job aspirants’ families in Patna were transferred through deeds in the name of Rabri Devi and daughters Bharti and Hema Yadav, in return for jobs The lands were acquired at rates lower than circle rates and much lower than market rates. No advertisement or any public notice was issued for such appointments,” they added.
The list of accused also includes a former general manager of the railways, Soumya Raghavan, and seven candidates.
In July this year, the CBI arrested Prasad’s close aide Bhola Yadav in Delhi in connection with the alleged scam.
CBI also conducted searches at four premises — two each in Patna and Darbhanga (in Bihar) — belonging to Yadav, and recovered incriminating documents and a diary from his ancestral house. Yadav was the officer on special duty (OSD) to Prasad during his tenure as railway minister Yadav’s role in the scam surfaced during his questioning, a CBI official had earlier said.
The RJD has repeatedly stated that this CBI case, and several others against the Yadav family, are “a political ploy of the BJP’s central government.”
