Patna: Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav’s elder son Tej Pratap Yadav has claimed that his father was being held captive in the national capital and prevented from returning to Bihar despite having been released from jail.
He said the captors of his father, who is convalescing in Delhi since release from Ranchi jail a few months ago, were “four or five people” he did not wish to name, PTI reported.
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Yadav, who had been awarded sentences by a special CBI court in fodder scam cases, has been putting up at his Delhi residence since his release from jail on bail.
The 73-year-old former Bihar chief minister, who is said to be suffering from multiple ailments, has been staying away from the daily humdrum of politics.
He has, however, addressed the RJD workers over video conferences on a couple of occasions.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) cornered Tejashwi Yadav post his elder brother’s utterances.
BJP spokesmen Nikhil Anand and Arvind Kumar Singh stated that political differences notwithstanding they had “immense respect” for the RJD supremo and demanding that Tejashwi come clean on the matter.
Tejashwi, however, contradicted his elder brother’s statement and said that “to say Lalu is bandhak (in captivity) simply does not go with his personality”.
“He is a man who has served as the chief minister of Bihar and the country's railway minister. He was the one who had got L.K. Advani arrested,” he added.
The 32-year-old’s statement was a reference to the RJD supremo’s tenure as the Bihar chief minister when he had got Advani arrested at Samastipur, causing the Ayodhya Rath Yatra to stop.
Both Tej Pratap and Tejashwi had made their debut together in politics in the 2015 Bihar assembly polls.
Tejashwi was given the deputy chief minister’s post in Nitish Kumar-led government, while the elder brother had to be content with a cabinet berth.
Tejashwi later became the leader of the opposition after Kumar broke the alliance with the RJD.