The Delhi High Court on Wednesday issued notice to the CBI on a petition filed by Rashtra Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad Yadav challenging the lower court order filing corruption and criminal conspiracy charges against him and his family members in the alleged land-for-jobs scam.
The bench of Justice Manoj Jain sought the CBI’s response to Yadav’s petition against the orders of the lower court on January 9 and February 16, setting March 17 as the next hearing date.
On January 9, Special Judge Vishal Ghogni of the Ross Avenue Court filed charges against former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, his wife Rabri Devi, his sons Tejashwi and Tej Pratap Yadav, and his daughter Misa Bharti in the scam. The judge noted that Yadav used the Railway Ministry as his “personal fiefdom” to organize a criminal enterprise during his tenure as Union Railway Minister. The judgment brought to light a comprehensive conspiracy where public employment served as a bargaining chip to secure transfer of land in the names of Yadav family members. The court formally filed charges on February 16.
Justice Jain also scheduled the hearing of a pending petition filed by Bhola Yadav, Yadav’s close aide, challenging the orders of the trial court pardoning five accused in the scam and allowing them to convert to OK. “The learned counsel appears before the CBI on prior notice and, without prejudice to his rights and claims, accepts the notice,” the court said in the order.
The bench restrained the CBI from examining the approvers until it decides the petitions filed by Yadav and Bhola Yadav. “The question is that the authorized body need not be examined unless we hear this plea. Let it (trial) continue, you (CBI) examine others…,” the bench told CBI Additional Solicitor General D P Singh.
Yadav’s lawyers, Maninder Singh and Kapil Sibal, said the agency’s case rested entirely on the approvers’ statements, noting that no job recipients had complained of paying bribes. They added that Yadav played no role in the appointment of Class-IV railway employees, whose appointments during his tenure were later settled after he left the ministry. Senior lawyers pointed out that the first indictment did not include consenters. “One year after the first chargesheet was issued, the statement of the authorized body was recorded,” Singh said.
The CBI registered the case on May 18, 2022, alleging that Yadav, as Union Railway Minister from 2004 to 2009, allotted Group D jobs to the railways in exchange for plots of land transferred to his family members and associates.
The 2023 chargesheet filed by the agency in a Delhi court named 78 accused, including 30 officials of the Railway Ministry. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) then filed a money laundering case and filed its chargesheet in 2024 naming Yadav and his family members among those who had acquired ill-gotten wealth through alleged corruption.
To be sure, a coordination bench in January reserved judgment on Yadav’s separate petition to quash the land-for-employment issue.
