Land-for-job 'scam': ED chargesheets Rabri Devi, daughters, RJD smells conspiracy

As the Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed its chargesheet, on Tuesday (January 9), in the alleged land-for-jobs scam linked to the Railways, the RJD sensed “a conspiracy being hatched at the highest level of government” to keep Bihar deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav embroiled in “fake cases motivated by political vendetta” till the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

The over 4700-page chargesheet, filed before a special PMLA court in Delhi, has named RJD chief and former Union railway minister Lalu Yadav’s wife, Rabri Devi, and their daughters Misa Bharti and Hema Yadav, among others, as alleged beneficiaries of money laundering. The PMLA court will hear the ED’s submissions on the chargesheet on January 16.

Lalu, Tejashwi not named in chargesheet

However, the chargesheet does not name Lalu, during whose tenure as railway minister from 2004 to 2009 in the UPA-I government the alleged scam of hiring Group D railway employees in exchange for highly underpriced land parcels took place. Similarly, the chargesheet doesn’t name Tejashwi Yadav too, who, along with his parents and 14 others, is a key accused in the original case filed by the CBI in the matter. The ED has told the PMLA court that its investigation in the case is still ongoing and that the agency would file a supplementary chargesheet with additional details at a later stage.

The RJD believes that the ED’s “sudden rush” to file the chargesheet, naming Rabri, Misa, Hema and others, while refraining to mention Lalu or Tejashwi is a “deliberate ploy” by the agency, at the behest of the “two people (Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah) sitting at the very top of the government”, to intimidate the RJD and its leadership ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

“Not just Bihar but all of India is watching this blatant misuse of investigating agencies for the BJP’s vendetta politics. It is a matter of public record that this case was first registered in 2008, 16 years ago, and it was during the reign of the current government that the CBI had closed the case (in 2021) admitting that there was no case to be made out of the allegations... then, in August 2022, when Bihar saw a reverse Operation Lotus with the return of our (RJD-JDU-Congress alliance) government, this case was reopened without any new evidence being placed on record,” RJD MP and the party’s chief spokesperson Manoj Kumar Jha said.

Allegations still unclear

Jha claimed that the ED’s chargesheet, in particular, and the land-for-jobs case in general was “full of anomalies” and that “its only purpose is to keep our leadership embroiled in making rounds of the ED, CBI and courts before the elections... agle chaar mahine ka khel hai yeh, phir sab dobaara thande baste mei chala jayega (this will go on for the next four months – till the Lok Sabha polls conclude – and then the matter will be consigned to the cold storage again).”

The RJD leader said the BJP is wary of its poll prospects in Bihar, where Nitish Kumar's JD (U), Lalu's RJD, the Congress and the Left Front are set to fight the Lok Sabha elections under the INDIA coalition's banner. "The BJP doesn't want Tejashwi or anyone from Lalu's family to campaign across Bihar and all of this is being done by the ED and CBI to ensure this," he said.

While the specific allegations made against Rabri, Misa, Hema and others in the ED chargesheet are still unclear, the CBI’s case against Lalu, Tejashwi, Rabri and others was based on allegations that Group D employees were hired across various railway zones during Lalu’s ministerial term in lieu of the said employees selling or gifting their land parcels, of varying dimensions, to Lalu’s family members through a “shell company” named AK Infosystems Private Limited.

The ED case is based on a CBI’s FIR, registered in May 2022, against Lalu and others. The ED has been claiming that these land parcels were bought, mostly in cash, by Lalu’s family members and AK Infosystems at throwaway prices and that the recipients then sold the land at astronomically higher profits.

There are, however, per Jha, multiple anomalies in the allegations being levelled by the two agencies against Lalu’s family, particularly against Tejashwi, and also in the way the ED and the CBI have proceeded with their respective probes. Jha points out that one of the main allegations made against Tejashwi in the case is that AK Infosystems was his “shell company” and that he used to operate the whole scam from the company’s registered Delhi address.

'Targeting will increase manifold'

“The scam supposedly took place between 2004 and 2009. For most of that period, Tejashwi, who is 34 years old now, would have been a minor; so how was he operating a company and such transactions. Neither agency has been able to offer any answer to this but they continue to summon Tejashwi whenever they want and he duly complies. Secondly, the CBI had named Amit Katyal (former director of AK Infosystems) as a protected witness but the ED went and arrested him last November. What kind of procedure are they following... one agency names a person a protected witness and the other goes and arrests him,” Jha told The Federal.

The RJD leader also predicted that “this targeting of anyone who stands against the BJP is going to increase manifold until the Lok Sabha polls”. “They are trying to intimidate Lalu and Tejashwi, they will do the same with Hemant Soren in Jharkhand, with Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee in Bengal, with DMK leaders in Tamil Nadu, with Congress leaders in Karnataka... what they are already doing with Arvind Kejriwal and other AAP leaders in Delhi is already before everyone... the Supreme Court had called the CBI a caged parrot during the UPA days but today the CBI and the ED are not in a cage; they have become violent and the government has installed a chip on them which takes them to any Opposition leader who chooses to resist the BJP instead of joining it.”