Delhi court orders money laundering charges against Lalu Prasad and family
Nine people face charges in the IRCTC hotels case, including two former Bihar chief ministers and the state's leader of the opposition. Seven others were discharged.
A Delhi court has ordered that money laundering charges be framed against nine people in the IRCTC hotels case, among them the former Bihar chief ministers Lalu Prasad Yadav and Rabri Devi, and their son Tejashwi Yadav. Seven others named in the case were discharged. Formal charges will be framed on 3 October.
The order moves a case that has run for years into trial, and it does so against the family that has dominated Bihar's opposition politics for three decades. Lalu Prasad, who is president of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, was Union railways minister when the leases at the heart of the case were awarded.
What the judge found
Special judge Vishal Gogne said in oral observations that there was a "strong suspicion of abuse of office and proceeds of crime" in the hands of Rabri Devi and Tejashwi Yadav, who he said "continue to enjoy a tainted land in Patna" - land transferred to them, in his account, at the behest of Lalu Prasad during his years as Union railways minister.
The judge held that, on the face of it, a tender was manipulated by railway officials while Lalu Prasad was railways minister, to award the lease of hotels at Ranchi and Puri. The directors of the firm that won the lease transferred land in Patna to Sarla Gupta, a close associate of Lalu Prasad, who then transferred shares to Rabri Devi for what the court described as a pittance.
The Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate allege that Lalu Prasad and officials of the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation misused their positions to rig the tender, granting sub-lease rights for the two railway hotels to M/s Sujata Hotels Pvt. Ltd, the firm of Vijay and Vinay Kochhar.
Investigators describe the arrangement as a quid pro quo: public contracts exchanged for private property, land and company shares passed to the Yadav family at prices far below their worth.
The land, and how it moved
The transaction at the centre of the case involves 358 decimal of prime land in Patna, transferred in February 2005 to M/s Delight Marketing Company Pvt. Ltd, owned by the family of the Rashtriya Janata Dal leader PC Gupta. That transfer, the agencies allege, was the return for the hotel sub-lease.
The company holding the land was then gradually taken over by Rabri Devi and Tejashwi Yadav through purchases of shares at nominal prices, according to the Enforcement Directorate. The agency alleges the money used to acquire the land was of dubious origin and had been laundered through 151 group companies linked to PC Gupta, using a non-banking financial company, M/s Abhishek Finance Company Limited.
The ED also questioned the funds Rabri Devi used to buy the shares. It claims that people from whom Tejashwi Yadav is said to have purchased shares denied any knowledge of ever holding them.
The agency filed its first chargesheet in 2018, naming PC Gupta, his wife Sarla Gupta, the firm Lara Projects and ten others.
What it means in Bihar
The three named are not peripheral figures. Lalu Prasad and Rabri Devi both served as chief minister of Bihar; Tejashwi Yadav is the RJD's principal face and the leader of the opposition in the state. An order to frame charges is not a conviction, and the allegations remain allegations until a court rules, but it puts the family's most senior figures into a criminal trial rather than a preliminary proceeding.
The discharge of seven of the sixteen accused also narrows the case. The court has not yet framed the charges themselves — that step comes on 3 October, and it is the point at which the trial formally begins.
The case turns on a chain that prosecutors will now have to prove in court: a rigged tender in Delhi, hotels in Ranchi and Puri, a plot of land in Patna, a structure of companies, and shares that changed hands for a fraction of their value. Each link has to hold. The judge's language on Thursday - suspicion, prima facie, allegations - is the language of a case being sent to trial, not one decided.
What is already settled is the political cost. The RJD goes into its next contest in Bihar with its president, a former chief minister and its leader of the opposition all facing charges in the same courtroom, on a timetable set by a judge rather than by the party.
Sources
- Hindustan Times — Court order, judge's reasoning, CBI and ED allegations, land transfer detail
