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Bihar: On Saturday, official sources said that the Enforcement Directorate has arrested Amit Katyal, a businessman with alleged associate of RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and his son Tejashwi Yadav in connection with a money laundering probe into the alleged land-for-jobs scam case.
According to the probe agency, Amit Katyal’s company was involved in money laundering in the land-for-job scam. Amit Katyal, the ‘associate’, was detained by the central agency yesterday and was arrested after questioning, they added.
The company, AK Infosystem, has been under the scanner and investigation of the anti-money laundering agency and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the case. He is expected to be produced before a local court in which the ED will seek his custody for interrogation.
The agency had issued multiple summons to Katyal earlier and officials said that he had been evading the agency’s summons for about two months. Delhi High Court had recently rejected his plea to quash the ED summons against him in the same case.
Katyal, according to the Enforcement Directorate, is a “close associate” of the RJD supremo and former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Yadav.The ED had raided the premises of Katyal in March when it had also covered the premises of Lalu Prasad, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav, his sisters and others.
According to the ED, Katyal is a “close associate” of Lalu as well as a former director of AK Infosystems Private Limited. AK Infosystems Private Limited is allegedly a “beneficiary company” in the case and its registered address is a residential building in south Delhi’s New Friends Colony, which was being used by Tejashwi Yadav.
The alleged scam comes from the time when Lalu was the railway minister in the UPA-1 government. It was alleged that several people were appointed to Group ‘D’ positions in various zones of the Indian Railways from 2004 to 2009, and in lieu, they transferred their land to the family members of the then railway minister Lalu Prasad and AK Infosystems Private Limited.
The ED case, filed under the criminal sections of the PMLA, stems from a complaint lodged by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). “The property has been though, on paper declared as office of M/s A B Exports Private Limited and M/s AK Infosystems Pvt ltd, it is being exclusively used as residential premises by Tejasvi Prasad Yadav, son of Lalu Prasad Yadav,” the ED statement read.
The CBI had said that no advertisement or public notice was issued for the appointment but some residents of Patna were appointed as substitutes in various zonal railways in Mumbai, Jabalpur, Kolkata, Jaipur and Hazipur.
The land-for-job scam pertains to the period when Lalu Yadav was the railway minister in the first term of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre. As a quid pro quo, the candidates, directly or through their immediate family members, allegedly sold land to Prasad’s family members at highly discounted rates, up to one-fourth to one-fifth of the prevailing market rates, the CBI had alleged.
