ED Questions Rabri Devi For 5 Hrs In Land-for-jobs Linked Money Laundering Case

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) questioned former Bihar chief minister Rabri Devi for about five hours and recorded her statement here on Thursday in a money laundering case linked to the alleged land-for-jobs scam, official sources said.

She reached the office of the federal probe agency in central Delhi around 11 am and left around 6 pm. In between, she stepped out for about an hour for lunch.

It was not immediately known if she had been summoned again.

The sources said the statement of 68-year-old Rabri Devi, wife of RJD chief Lalu Prasad, was recorded under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

Rabri Devi’s children, including Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav, daughters Misa Bharti (RJD MP in Rajya Sabha), Chanda Yadav and Ragini Yadav, have also been questioned by the agency in the case over the last few months.

The ED had raided the premises of Chanda Yadav, Ragini Yadav, Hema Yadav, and former RJD MLA Abu Dojana in Patna, Phulwari Sharif, Delhi-NCR, Ranchi and Mumbai in March this year.

The agency had claimed that it had seized “unaccounted cash” of Rs 1 crore and detected proceeds of crime worth Rs 600 crore during the searches.

The alleged scam pertains to the period when Lalu Prasad was the railway minister in the UPA-1 government, and the money laundering case stems from an FIR of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

It is alleged by the agencies that during the period 2004-09, various persons were appointed to Group D positions in various zones of the Indian Railways, and in lieu, the persons concerned transferred their land to Prasad’s family members.

It is alleged by the CBI in its complaint that no advertisement or public notice was issued for the appointment but some residents of Patna were appointed as substitutes in different zonal railways located at Mumbai, Jabalpur, Kolkata, Jaipur and Hazipur.

As a quid pro quo, the candidates, directly or through their immediate family members, allegedly sold land to the family members of Prasad at highly discounted rates, up to one-fourth to one-fifth of the prevailing market rates, the CBI had alleged.

Tejashwi Yadav has denied these allegations in the past, saying that the then railway minister Prasad had “no powers” to give employment in exchange for favours.