Lalu in trouble again! ED seizes 11 plots worth 44 crores in IRCTC hotel scam

Patna, June 14: Former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav is in trouble again. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) seized 11 plots of land in Patna worth Rs 44.75 crore. The seized plots by ED were linked to RJD chief Lalu Prasad's family, as part of the IRCTC hotel money laundering case.

 

Enforcement Directorate was allowed to take possession of the seized assets by a designated PMLA authority recently. The possession documents were notified and a huge notice board, bearing the signature of Assistant Director of the Delhi zonal office-I, was today put up at the contiguous plots, measuring about three acres, in Danapur near the Bihar capital.

The central probe agency had provisionally attached the plots, valued at Rs 44.75 crore (market rate), in December last year under the PMLA, in connection with the IRCTC hotel allotment case. The authority, in its recent order, had said that the assets were "involved in money laundering."

The land pieces are in the name of Delight Marketing Co Pvt Ltd, now Lara Projects LLP, whose managing partner is Lalu's wife Rabri Devi, partners are his sons Tejashwi Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav, and Meridian Construction India Limited promoted by Abu Dojana, an MLA of the former Bihar Chief Minister's party the Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD).

When the ED attached these assets last year, a shopping mall was supposed to come up on these plots. It also had recorded the statements of Rabri Devi, Tejashwi, the former deputy chief minister of Bihar, and others in the case.

Earlier an FIR was filed against the then Railway Minister Lalu Prasad last year. It was in regard to the Indian Railway and Catering Tourism Corporation which is a subsidy of Indian Railways was awarded maintenance contract for two of its hotels in Ranchi and Puri to Sujata Hotel (a company owned by Vinay and Vijay Kochhar) in 2006 allegedly in return for a prime three-acre plot in Patna through a benami company.

The FIR alleged that Lalu abused his official position to extend undue favors to the Kochhar. The benami firm, Delight Marketing Company, was allegedly owned by Sarla Gupta, the wife of RJD MP Prem Chand Gupta. She, too, has been named in the charge sheet.