The Enforcement Directorate has arrested Amit Katyal,
an alleged associate of RJD chief Lalu Prasad and his son Tejashwi Yadav, in
connection with a money laundering investigation into the alleged land-for-jobs
scam case, official sources said on Saturday.
Amit Katyal was detained by the agency on Friday and
was arrested after questioning, they said. He is expected to be produced before
a local court where the ED will seek his custody for interrogation.
Sources said Katyal was evading the agency’s summons
for questioning for about two months.
The Delhi High Court had recently rejected his plea to
quash the ED summons against him in this case.
The premises of Katyal were raided by the federal
agency in March when it had also covered the premises of Lalu Prasad, Bihar
Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav, his sisters and others.
Katyal, according to the ED, is a “close associate” of
the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo as well as a former director of A K
Infosystems Private Limited.
AK Infosystems Private Limited is allegedly a “beneficiary
company” in the case and its registered address is a residential building in
south Delhi’s New Friends Colony, which was being used by Tejashwi Yadav.
The alleged scam pertains to the period when Lalu
Prasad was the railway minister in the UPA-1 Government.
It is alleged that from 2004 to 2009, several people
were appointed to Group “D” positions in various zones of the Indian Railways
and in lieu, these people transferred their land to the family members of the
then railway minister Prasad and AK Infosystems Private Limited.
The ED case, filed under the criminal sections of the
PMLA, stems from a complaint lodged by the Central Bureau of Investigation
(CBI).
According to the CBI, no advertisement or public
notice was issued for appointment, but some residents of Patna were appointed
as substitutes in different zonal railways in Mumbai, Jabalpur, Kolkata, Jaipur
and Hazipur.
As a quid pro quo, the candidates, directly or through
their immediate family members, allegedly sold land to Prasad’s family members
at highly discounted rates, up to one-fourth to one-fifth of the prevailing
market rates, the CBI has alleged.
PTI
