Delhi special court orders PMLA charges against Lalu Yadav, Rabri, Tejashwi in IRCTC case
A Delhi special court has ordered money-laundering charges against Lalu Prasad Yadav, his wife Rabri Devi and their son Tejashwi Yadav in the IRCTC hotels case. The court said there is “strong suspicion” that a railway contract was traded for a valuable plot in Patna and that the family still benefits from it.
The special judge, Vishal Gogne of the Rouse Avenue Courts, ordered that formal charges under Sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) be brought against the nine persons accused. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) discharged seven of the others named, and it will read the formal charges on October 3.
The accusations date back to when Lalu Yadav was Union Railway Minister from 2004 to 2009. It is claimed that the officials who reported to him altered the tender for two of the old Bengal Nagpur Railway hotels, one in Ranchi and the other in Puri, in such a way that the leases were awarded to Sujata Hotel Pvt. Ltd., a company owned by brothers Vinay and Vijay Kochhar. During that same period, the Kochhars transferred two to three point five acres of commercial land near Saguna More in Patna at a heavy discount to Delight Marketing Company Pvt. Ltd., a company controlled by Prem Chand Gupta, a close associate of Lalu, and Gupta’s wife, Sarla. Later on, the company sold its shares for very little to Rabri Devi and Tejashwi Yadav. Delight Marketing then became Lara Projects LLP. The court said the family still holds what it called “tainted land” on a valuable commercial street in Patna.
The judge said the land resulted from criminal conduct, stating that the abuse of office produced those proceeds for Rabri Devi and Tejashwi Yadav. He dismissed the defence’s claim that the inquiry was a political vendetta, saying the nature, timing, and course of the investigation did not justify such a statement. He noted that some deals are made openly. Citing Tagore, he cautions that power that removes all checks from its way will eventually bring destruction upon itself.
The three Yadavs involved in the trial are Prem Chand Gupta, Sarla Gupta, and the Kochhar brothers; the companies are Sujata Hotels and Lara Projects LLP. Those who were discharged include Rahul Yadav, Lalu’s son-in-law; Gaurav Gupta; Nath Mal Kakrania; Vijay Tripathi; Deoki Nandan Tulshyan; Rajiv Relan; and Abhishek Finance Pvt. Ltd. The ED had previously seized properties worth Rs 44.75 crore, and the Adjudicating Authority has confirmed this attachment. That amount, together with the Patna plot at the heart of the matter, now constitutes the financial basis of the prosecution.
The money-laundering case is based on a CBI FIR dated 2017–18. In October last year, the same court charged Lalu Yadav and 11 other people with corruption, conspiracy and cheating in the earlier case. The two trials will now proceed simultaneously: one on how the hotels were handed out and the other on how the land was transferred into the family’s possession.
The accused deny all the charges and regard the investigation as a political tool. The court has replied that the material available at this stage is sufficient to proceed with the trial. The following hearing will determine whether the suspicion becomes proven.
