An ED team had gone to the official residence of Prasad's wife and former Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi in Patna to serve summons. Prasad and Tejashwi have been asked to appear at the ED office at Bank Road, Patna to record their statements.
Tejashwi has appeared before the agency in this case once in Delhi last year. It is understood that both of them had told the ED that they were busy with their political and official work, hence could not record their statements in Delhi.
The alleged scam dates back to the time when Lalu Prasad was the Railway Minister in the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. On January 9, the ED filed a charge sheet in the money laundering case related to land for railway jobs, naming Rabri Devi, her daughters RJD MP Misa Bharti and Hema Yadav and other members of Lalu Prasad's family.
On the day the chargesheet was filed, RJD Rajya Sabha member Manoj Jha had called the ED's action “vengeance politics” and accused the BJP of using investigative agencies against opposition parties.
The case, registered under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), is based on a complaint filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). CBI has already filed chargesheet in this case.
Lalu Prasad, Rabri Devi and Tejashwi Yadav have got bail from the lower court in the CBI case in October.
According to the CBI, no advertisement or public notice was issued for the appointment, but some residents of Patna were appointed in place of other candidates in various zonal railways in Mumbai, Jabalpur, Kolkata, Jaipur and Hajipur.
The CBI alleges that in return, the candidates, directly or through their family members, sold land to Prasad's family members at concessional rates ranging from one-fourth to one-fifth of the prevailing market rates.
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