A day after the income tax department conducted raids at 22 locations in Delhi and adjacent areas over alleged benami (proxy) land deals done by Lalu Prasad Yadav and his children, RJD and BJP workers clashed in Patna on Friday.
Members of both parties sustained injuries in the violence and the BJP filed a criminal complaint against Yadav and his two minister-sons Tej Pratap and Tejaswi for “orchestrating the attack”, The Hindu reported.
On Friday, Yadav rubbished the allegations of corrupt land deals, saying the claims of him and his children owning Rs 1,000 crore worth of benami property had been concocted by the BJP-RSS to exact political revenge. He also took to Twitter to hit back at the Sangh Parivar.
Yadav also lashed out at BJP’s Sushil Modi, who has released documents recently to support the benami property allegations, NDTV reported. He alleged that Sushil Modi had ensured bad press for Yadav after his property was searched.
They call me the biggest zamindar, they say I am the biggest land owner in Bihar... Whatever my children have acquired – be it land, shares – the details are in the public domain. The income tax department has the details about it.
On the move of building a mall in Patna, he said:
What’s wrong in building a mall? I shared 50:50 with the builder, so how does it all come into my account? I am the head of the family and overseeing everything and this is an attempt to create a bad perception about me.
Yadav has alleged that he is being targeted due to his scathing critique of the Prime Minister, whom he has called a fascist. The RJD chief vowed to throw Narendra Modi out of power, as CNN-News18 reported.
Whenever I have taken the baton, communal forces had to bow down. This is going to happen again. The Modi government has failed on all fronts and it is only playing divisive politics. They are targeting me and my sons. Tell me, which are those 22 places raided by the I-T department? All allegations against me are fake.
Ahead of the 27 August mega rally, Congress president Sonia Gandhi called Yadav to ask him to participate in it. But the RJD leader may not be out on bail till then as he will face a fresh trial in all four fodder scam cases, which needs to be wrapped up within nine months according to a Supreme Court order.
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