IT dept attaches Lalu family's suspected benami property in Patna

The Income-Tax department has attached a property worth more than Rs 3 crore near Patna, suspected to be a benami asset held by RJD chief Lalu Prasad's family members who are facing investigation in a land-for-hotels scam.

IT department officials have put an attachment notice on the said property in Sheikhpura locality of the state capital.

"The notice of attachment was affixed on the property, estimated to be worth Rs 3.5 crore, in Sheikhpura locality yesterday," a senior IT department official told PTI today.

The official said the property is in the name of a company, named Fairgrow Holding. He said a few members of the Lalu family were directors in the firm "till a few years ago".

He said Lalu's sons Tejashwi Yadav and Tej Pratap, besides daughters Ragini and Chanda, are no longer directors of the company. "However, notices sent to the company several times were not answered and no other claimant of the property came forward. It suggested the property was a benami holding".

Prasad, a former Bihar chief minister, is currently serving sentences in a number of fodder scam cases.

Members of his family have been named in cases filed by the Enforcement Directorate and the IT department in connection with the land-for-hotels scam.

The scam relates to tranfer of prime land properties to Prasad's family by a hotelier brothers of Patna in return for getting contract for running two Railway hotels in Ranchi and Puri when Prasad was the Railway Minister in UPA-I government.

On one such land measuring 3 acre, Bihar's biggest mall is proposed. But the contruction was stopped and the land has been attached by the Enforcement Directorate.