Sleuths of Enforcement Directorate (ED) would further grill Uttar Pradesh’s former minister Gayatri Prasad Prajapati in connection with a sand mining scam during the previous Samajwadi Party regime in the state. 

Besides, the ED would also summon Gayatri Prajapati’s sons to interrogate them as to how they became directors of several companies and later quit when their father faced a probe in the sand mining scam.

Sources said that ED officials had prepared a list of properties which Prajapati allegedly made from earnings through illegal mining by Shiv Singh and Sukhraj. The sources said that both were given mining lease by Prajapati even when they were not entitled to it. The lease was allocated without e-auction for mining which is mandatory. 

Sources in the ED also confirmed that the agency would soon issue summons on Gayatri’s son Anil and Anurag Prajapati. Interestingly, their names were included in the below poverty line (BPL) card till Gayatri Prajapati was made a minister. And soon after, they suddenly became directors of about a dozen companies. 

However, when then Lokayukta NK Mehrotra started a probe on a complaint during Akhilesh Yadav’s regime, Anil and Anurag resigned from the companies claiming that they had nothing to do with them. However, now the ED would grill them in detail about their association with the companies.

On Tuesday too, the ED quizzed Gayatri Prajapati in a private ward of Urology department of King George’s Medical University hospital for six hours. 

Prajapati is undergoing treatment for kidney ailment at the KGMU hospital for the past 45 days. Presently, Prajapati is in jail in connection with a gang-rape charge since March 2017. 

Earlier this month, CBI sleuths had raided his residence and those of his kin including his sons. Later, the ED registered a case of money laundering and started investigation.