ED tightens grip around Tej Pratap in hotel scam probe

New Delhi: The ED is now tightening its grip around Tej Pratap, another son of RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, in connection with its money laundering investigation into the IRCTC’s hotel scam.

It is learnt that the agency will soon issue summons to him for seeking certain clarifications in connection with the case. The Central probe agency recently attached a three-acre plot worth Rs 44.7 crore in Patna, which allegedly belongs to RJD chief Lalu Prasad’s family and where one of the biggest malls in the city was to come up. The property, provisionally attached under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, is also the subject of a CBI inquiry and certain members of the family have already been questioned by central investigative agencies.

In July, the CBI sleuths searched the premises of Lalu Prasad and his wife Rabri Devi after filing an FIR against the couple, Tejashwi Yadav and five others in a 2006 case of IRCTC transferring two railway hotels, one each at Ranchi and Puri, to Sujata Hotel Pvt Ltd, in the alleged contravention of tender norms, during the tenure of Lalu Prasad as Union railway minister. According to the CBI FIR, the owners of Sujata Hotel Pvt Ltd had, a year before being given charge of the two railway hotels, allegedly transferred a prime three-acre plot along Bailey Road of Patna, to Delight Marketing Pvt Ltd, a company owned by RJD leader P.C. Gupta’s wife. Control of Delight Marketing, in turn, was transferred to Tejashwi Yadav and Rabri Devi and the company was renamed Lara Projects LLP, the CBI claimed. Others named in the FIR include Vijay Kochhar and Vinay Kochhar, directors of Sujata Hotel Pvt Ltd; Sarla Gupta, director of Delight Marketing Pvt Ltd and P.K. Goel, then managing director of IRCTC.