CBI questions Tejashwi Yadav in corruption case

Tejashwi Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav

The CBI today questioned Tejashwi Yadav, son of former railways minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, in connection with alleged corruption in the award of contract to maintain two IRCTC hotels in 2006.

The 27-year old former deputy chief minister of Bihar has skipped three notices for questioning in the case before appearing today before the investigation team, the sources said.

They said Tejashwi arrived at the agency headquarters at the scheduled time of 11 am.

The agency had questioned Lalu Yadav for seven hours yesterday.

The case pertains to allegations that Yadav, as railway minister, handed over the maintenance of two hotels run by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, a subsidiary of the Indian Railways, in Ranchi and Puri to Sujata Hotel, a company owned by Vinay and Vijay Kochhar, in return for a prime plot of three acres in Patna through a benami company.

The FIR alleged that the RJD leader abused his official position for extending undue favours to the Kochhars and acquired a piece of "high value premium land" through the benami firm Delight Marketing Company.

As a quid pro quo, he "dishonestly and fraudulently" awarded the contract to them for the two hotels.

After the tender was awarded to Sujata Hotel, the ownership of Delight Marketing also changed hands from Sarla Gupta to Rabri Devi and Tejashwi Yadav between 2010 and 2014, according to the FIR.