Judge remands Rajni Priya in CBI custody for 4 days in Srijan case: Lawyer

PATNA: A CBI special judge has remanded Rajni Priya, the secretary of the Bhagalpur-headquartered Srijan Mahila Vikas Sahyog Samiti, in the custody of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for four days, special public prosecutor LR Ansari said on Wednesday.

Ansari said special judge Mahesh Kumar ordered CBI custody for four days as against the seven days custody sought by CBI

Rajni Priya is the daughter-in-law of (late) Manorama Devi, who founded the NGO that is at the centre of the fraud and is accused of siphoning off at least ₹1,000 crore of government money into its accounts. Priya had been on the run since 2017 when the case was taken up.

According to a PTI report, Rajni Priya did not send her 13-year-old child to school over the last six years to ensure that investigators would not be able to track her. It added that the CBI was able to track her via the families of her household help

The CBI has lodged about 24 first information reports (FIR) on the allegations of misappropriation of government funds by fudging records and submitted a charge sheet in the case in 2020 against Rajni Priya and her husband Amit Kumar apart from bank and government officials, and arrested over 15 people in this connection.

“It was alleged that the officials of said NGO entered into a conspiracy with officials of various Banks i.e. Bank of Baroda, Indian Bank, Bank of India, etc. for diversion of government funds into the accounts of said NGO by using forged documents,” a CBI communique issued last week said.