The CBI on Saturday summoned Bihar deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav in the Land for jobs scam. Yadav was earlier called for questioning on March 4 but he had not appeared before the CBI sleuths, following which a fresh date was given for Saturday, they said.
The federal agency recently questioned RJD supremo Lalu Prasad and his wife Rabri Devi in Delhi and Patna respectively.
However, Tejashwi Yadav won't appear before CBI due to his wife's health. After the ED raid, she was hospitalised on Friday at a private hospital in Delhi. She is pregnant and after twelve hours of interrogation she fainted due to BP problems, sources said.
Meanwhile, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday recovered Rs 53 lakh, USD 1,900, about 540 grams of gold and bullion and 1.5 kg of gold jewellery from premises of former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav's family and RJD leaders, in connection with a money laundering investigation into the land for jobs 'scam' case.
The searches also covered premises linked to Lalu Prasad's daughters Ragini Yadav, Chanda Yadav and Hema Yadav, former RJD MLA Syed Abu Dojana, Amit Katyal, Navdeep Sardana and Praveen Jain in places such as Patna, Phulwari Sharif, Delhi-NCR, Ranchi and Mumbai, officials said.
About two dozen locations were searched along with an escort of central security forces, they said. Dojana briefly appeared on a balcony of his palatial house in Patna to declare to media persons waiting outside that "I don't know what these people are trying to search at my place". "I only know this much that we are paying the price for not cowing down before the BJP," he said.
Premises of companies like Brahma City Pvt Ltd, Elite Landbase Pvt Ltd, Whiteland Corporation Pvt Ltd and Meridian Construction India Ltd were also searched. The house in Delhi's New Friends Colony area is the registered address of a "beneficiary company", A K Infosystems Pvt Ltd, involved in the case but, according to the ED, it was being used as a residential property by the Yadav family.
The alleged scam pertains to the period when Lalu Prasad was the railway minister in the UPA-1 government. The case pertains to people allegedly given employment in the railways in return for land parcels gifted or sold at cheap rates to the Yadav family and its associates, the officials said.
