IRCTC Scam: Delhi Court Orders Money Laundering Charges Against Lalu Prasad Yadav, Rabri Devi, and Tejashwi Yadav

A Delhi court ordered framing of money-laundering charges against Lalu Prasad Yadav, Rabri Devi, Tejashwi Yadav and six others in the Enforcement Directorate’s IRCTC hotel scam case. The matter is posted for October 3 for formal framing of charges. Special Judge Vishal Gogne passed the order on 10 September.

Out of 16 accused, the court discharged seven and directed charges against nine. Pronouncing the substantive portions of the order orally, Gogne held that at this stage the court did not need to apply the exacting standard of establishing mens rea — the mental state to commit a crime — and only had to see whether strong suspicion existed.

The court had already framed corruption charges in the related CBI case against the RJD leader and 11 others in October last year. In the ED case, the judge also rejected the argument that the proceedings were driven by political vendetta and moved the case to the next procedural stage.

Court Reasoning

Gogne rejected the defence claim of political targeting. He held that the nature, timing and course of the investigation did not show political vendetta against Lalu Prasad.

“Some dubious deals are indeed cut in plain sight, with the public layer serving to camouflage rather than to pry. The court would mindfully observe that the special courts for CBI and PMLA matters, especially for MP and MLA cases, exist precisely to detect such masked and circuitous deals, which strike Faustian bargains to trade public trust and assets for personal gains,” the court said.

Before pronouncing the order, the judge also invoked Rabindranath Tagore. “Whenever power removes all checks from its path to make its career easy, it triumphantly writes into its ultimate crash of death, its moral break becomes slacker every day, without its knowing it, and its slippery path of ease becomes its path of doom,” the judge said. Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, author, playwright, musician, composer, philosopher, social reformer, painter and one of the foremost figures of the Bengal Renaissance. He won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature as the first non-European to receive the honour. He added that Tagore held the moral compass for the Indian freedom movement and his words often bestowed cohesion in times of prevarication among the balladeers of freedom.

ED Allegations Detailed

The ED’s allegations span 2005 to 2014. The court held that the agency’s case strongly indicated that, under Lalu Prasad’s stewardship as railway minister, a tender was manipulated by railway officials for the award of the lease of radio hotels at Ranchi and Puli to Sujata Hotels.

“As quid pro quo, the directors of Sujata Hotels, namely Vinay Kochhar and Vijay Kochhar, transferred their prime land at Patna to a company named DMCPL, which was controlled by Prem Chand (PC) Gupta and his wife Sarla Gupta, close associates of Lalu Prasad, at undervalued rates,” the court said. It further held that Sarla Gupta and others later transferred DMCPL shares to Rabri Devi and Tejashwi Yadav at a pittance.

“The new entity which controls this virtually free land is Lara Projects LLP. There exists a strong suspicion that the abuse of office by Lalu Prasad Yadav created the proceeds of crime in the hands of his wife Rabri Devi and son Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, who continued to enjoy the use of this tainted land at a prized commercial avenue in Patna,” the court said. It added that the Patna land was the proceeds of crime and that money-laundering charges were liable to be framed against Lara Projects, Rabri Devi, Tejashwi Yadav, Lalu Prasad, PC Gupta, Sarla Gupta, Vijay Kochhar and Vinay Kochhar.

Accused And Evidence

Seven accused were discharged. The court found no adequate grounds to frame charges against Gaurav Gupta, Nath Mal Kakrania, Rahul Yadav, Vijay Tripathi, Deoki Nandan Tulshyan, Rajiv Kumar Relan and M/s Abhishek Finance Private Limited.

“Nine accused are being charged; seven are discharged. It is directed that a charge be framed against the accused under section 3 (offence of money laundering) read with section 4 (punishment for money laundering) of the PMLA,” the court said.

The judge also pointed to the material that, in the court’s view, created strong suspicion. That included witnesses and documents on the sale of land in Patna, the incorporation of DMCPL, a loan of Rs 2 crore given by Abhishek Finance to DMCPL, repayment of that loan, raising of reference shares, the change in DMCPL’s shareholding pattern in 2005, the status of various directors and the transfer of shares to Rabri Devi and Tejashwi. The court also said it had to determine “whether all checks from the path of power were indeed unhinged” by the former railway minister to present the project as untainted.