Benami land deals: Lalu Prasad Yadav comes under Income Tax scanner

New Delhi: The difficult times for Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav are to stay a little more. The Income-Tax department, who is investigating about the 'benami land deals' worth Rs 1,000 crore (allegedly involving the former Bihar Chief Minister), conducted raids and surveys at the 22 locations in Delhi, Gurgaon and Rewari.

Raids were conducted early Tuesday on the premises owned by several prominent businessmen and real estate agents along with the son of RJD parliamentarian PC Gupta and few other businessmen.

Ten other official premises have also been surveyed by the I-T department officials.

A senior I-T official stated that a team of about 100 tax department officials and police personnel are conducting the raids. “People and businessmen connected to the land deal involving Lalu Prasad and his family are being searched. There are allegations of benami deals worth about Rs 1,000 crore and subsequent tax evasion," he stated.

It is worth mentioning that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has also raided the Chennai residence of former finance minister P Chidambaram earlier in the morning.

Also Read: Residence of Congress leader P Chidambaram raided by CBI

Some facts:

The raid comes just few days after the Bharatiya Janata Party had accused Lalu Prasad and his children — Tejashwi Yadav, Tej Pratap Yadav and Misa Bharti — of being involved in corrupt land deals.

It could be recalled that Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had earlier demanded the Central Government to probe the alleged land deals.

What had Prasad said:

• Prasad had alleged Lalu’s daughter Misa Bharti, a Rajya Sabha MP, of failing to disclose some assets in her election affidavit and demanded the Election Commission to take action against her.
• The union minister said the land deals dated back to the time when Lalu Prasad was the Union Railway Minister in the UPA government.

Meanwhile, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar came to the rescue of Yadav stating that the BJP should move to court and substantiate their allegations with proof.

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“This is not an issue that falls in the domain of the state government nor in the company law of Bihar. If the BJP has documents, then it should take legal recourse to prove their accusations,” Nitish said.

It is worth mentioning that RJD is a constituent of Bihar’s ruling coalition led by Kumar and Yadav's sons Tejashwi Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav are ministers in the government.