The Income Tax department on Friday attached a 7,105 square feet land in Patna’s Sheikhpura region which is believed to have been registered in the name of a factory having alleged links Tej Pratap Yadav, the son of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav. The property was attached under the provisions of the Benami Property Transaction Act, as reported by ANI.
As per a PTI feed, the property is worth about Rs 3.5 crore and is under the name of a company called Fairgrow Holding. It has been alleged that members of the Lalu family like his sons Tejashwi Yadav, Tej Pratap and daughters Ragini, Chanda used to be its directors a few years ago.
Incidentally when the IT department sent several notices to the company, they went unanswered and no other party came forward to claim it, giving rise to the belief that it was a Benami property.
As claimed by India Today, the said property is a two storied building which was owned by a fodder scam accused RK Rana. This was then purchased by Fairgrow Holdings in 2002 for the sum of about Rs 76.32 lakh. As per the report, this company was taken over by Lalu’s close aide and former RJD MP Prem Gupta, while the former was the Railway Minister during UPA-1. The report further claims that it was in 2014 that the aforementioned children of Lalu assumed directorship of the company.
In connection with the matter, the IT department had questioned the two daughters in Delhi, while Tej Pratap and Tejaswi failed to appear before the authorities. Owing to the lack of satisfactory responses from the family members, the IT department proceeded to seal the property.
This seizure comes after the IT department has already seized the benami properties of Lalu’s daughter and Rajya Sabha member Misa Bharti, son-in-law Shailesh Kumar and his son and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav in Gurugram, Delhi and Rewari.