Janata Dal United (JDU) MLC Neeraj Kumar and party spokesperson Sanjay Singh levied some serious accusations on opposition party leaders on Friday. Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leaders Tej Pratap Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav were attacked a day prior to their dharna at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. The RJD is holding a dharna at Jantar Mantar to protest against the rape of minor girls at a state government funded shelter home in Muzaffarpur. The JDU MLC and party spokesperson alleged that both Tej Pratap and Tejashwi Yadav had been involved in a sexual harassment incident themselves in the national capital Delhi. The incident which allegedly occurred in January 2008, when Lalu Prasad Yadav was the Railway Minister raises questions on the credibility of the JDU leaders. Tejashwi Yadav’s personal assistant Mani Yadav too was targeted by the JDU leaders for being charged in Patna under the Immoral Trafficking Act in 2011. They also demanded Tejashwi to sack Mani Yadav for his past sins.
Both the RJD leaders were accused of having no credibility themselves, as the non-government organisation Sewa Sankalp Evam Vikas Samiti which ran the shelter home had been registered under Lalu Yadav and Rabri Devi’s rule in 1991. While the JDU spokesperson admitted that no FIR had been filed in the ‘eve-teasing case’ which involved Tej Pratap and Tejashwi, he went on to distribute paper cuttings of the news published on 2nd January, 2008. They also shared a copy of the FIR filed against Mani Yadav at the Gandhi Maidan police station in Patna on May 8th, 2011.
“Before going to Jantar Mantar to sit on dharna over the Muzaffarpur case, Tejashwi ji and Tej Pratap Yadavji should explain what happened on the night of January 1, 2008, when his father Lalu ji was the railway minister in New Delhi. They were very young at that time and these two brothers had got in involved in eve-teasing at three places – at Ashoka Hotel, Connaught Place and a Mehrauli farmhouse – on the same day”, Sanjay Singh said while speaking about the case. He urged the two brothers to come forward and speak more about the case in front of the people of Bihar. The two went on to add that rape accused RJD MLA Raj Ballabh Yadav had been a political advisor to Lalu thereby hinting towards a possible connection between RJD and its anti-women past.
Neeraj Kumar said, “We want to know who is Mani Yadav, son of Shiv Chandra Yadav, resident of R-Block Road No. 5 and flat No. 8 against whom the FIR was filed under the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act at Gandhi Maidan police station case number 134/2011? Is it not true that Mani Yadav is private assistant to the leader of Opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav? If it’s true, then, is it morally right to keep him as private assistant?” He went on to urge the senior RJD leaders to drive some sense into the minds of Tej Pratap and Tejashwi.
Back in 2008, the news that Lalu Prasad Yadav’s sons had been involved in a sexual harassment case and had been roughed up by friends of the girls for ‘eve-teasing’ had indeed done the rounds of papers. According to police sources both Tej Pratap and Tejashwi had engaged in eve-teasing at Ashoka hotel and Connaught Place followed by a farm house in Mehrauli. A group of youngsters, probably friends of the girls who had been subjected to eve-teasing by the two had decided to confront the two. It led to a scuffle in which both Tej Pratap and Tejashwi were seriously injured, a personal security officer accompanying them had lost his service pistol in the incident, for which a complaint had been filed in the local police station. Cases of assaulting a police officer too were filed but there was no case registered against the two for eve-teasing possibly owing to their influential background.
These accusations will definitely hurt the image of Tej Pratap and Tejashwi alongwith the RJD in Bihar. The moral high ground which they had wanted to take post the shameful incident in Muzzafarpur will no longer be there for the two leaders. Some serious questionings from the public is bound to follow these allegations levied by the JDU on RJD.