Bihar: CBI raids houses of 3 RJD leaders on day of assembly floor test

The central bureau of investigation (CBI) on Wednesday raided the houses of three Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leaders including two MPs and one MLA at Madhubani, Katihar and Patna.

The development comes on the day of the floor test in Bihar assembly where the Nitish Kumar-led state government have to prove their majority.

Kumar had broken the ties with the BJP a few days back and returned to the Grand Alliance with RJD.

The raids are reportedly being conducted in connection with the alleged land-for-job scam. The raids are underway in five separate places in Bihar and Jharkhand.

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The raids took place at the house-cum-office of MLC Sunil Singh, chairman of Biscomaun in Patna, while the houses of MPs Ahmed Ashafaque Karim at Katihar and Faiyaz Ahmed at Madhubani were raided.

Singh hit out at the central government over the raids.

“The raid is conducted by the CBI on the instruction of central government to tarnish my image,” he said.

Supporters of the MLC gathered near his house and staged a dharna to protest against the raids.

The raids started at around 8am when separate teams of CBI along with local police entered the houses of the lawmakers.

Not only Bihar, CBI recently conducted raids at multiple locations in Ranchi too in connection with illegal mining and extortion cases.

The raids were conducted following the interrogation of Pankaj Mishra, who is a representative of Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren.

Earlier, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had arrested Mishra on July 19 from Ranchi.

However, there was no clarity on whether the raids that took place were in relation to the land-for-job scam or illegal mining.