Patna: Bihar Health Minister Tej Pratap Yadav, against whom the Supreme Court has issued notices in connection with the murder case of journalist Rajdev Ranjan, on Thursday said similar notices should have been issued against BJP leaders also whose photograph had appeared with a suspect in the case and other criminals.
“I respect the Supreme Court order but wish to say that similar notices should have been issued against BJP leaders whose photograph had also appeared with the suspect in the journalist murder case and other criminals,” Tej Pratap Yadav, who is the son of RJD president Lalu Prasad, told reporters.
His reaction came in the wake of the apex court bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra issuing notices and seeking response from him, RJD leader Mohammad Shahabuddin and Bihar government on the plea of the journalist’s wife seeking transfer of the case from Siwan in Bihar to Delhi.
Lalu’s son reiterated his earlier version on the controversy triggered after his photograph had surfaced with Mohammad Kaif, a suspect in the scribe murder case, that thousands of people click their photograph with him during some function whom he did not know personally.
“Is anything written on the forehead of somebody about his background?” he said in his support.
Kaif, said to be a sharpshooter of RJD strongman Mohammad Shahabuddin, who was absconding, surrendered in a Siwan court on Wednesday last and was sent to jail.
In the wake of the controversy erupting over Tej Pratap’s photograph with Kaif, his brother and Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav had posted photographs of Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi with Kaif.
He had also posted on social media photographs of Union minister Ravishankar Prasad and Bihar BJP leaders Sushil Kumar Modi and Nand Kishore Yadav with Iqbal Sheikh whose name had come in the murder case of Akash De, son of a photojournalist in Patna last week.
Prasad had clarified that he did not know Iqbal who might have clicked photograph during some function and had said if the man is accused in some case, the police should act against him immediately.
PTI