More trouble is in store for former Samajwadi Party minister Gayatri Prasad Prajapati who is already in jail in connection with a rape case.
Now after the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), it is the Vigilance Department that has filed an FIR against Prajapati in a disproportionate assets (DA) case.
The case has been registered at the Lucknow sector of the Vigilance Department.
The Vigilance Department had earlier conducted an open investigation into the matter, which revealed assets worth more than six times the known sources of Prajapati’s income.
The Vigilance Department then sent an inquiry report to the state government, seeking permission to register an FIR in the case and prosecute the former minister in the DA case. After getting the green signal from the government, the Vigilance Department has started investigating cases by registering the disproportionate assets of the former minister.
According to sources, the period during which the Vigilance Department conducted an open investigation of disproportionate assets revealed that Prajapati’s income was around Rs 50 lakh and his assets were worth Rs 3.5 crore. Investigations by the Vigilance Department have revealed about 21 benami properties of Prajapati.
The former minister had bought agricultural land worth crores of rupees in Amethi, Sultanpur, Pratapgarh and other places in the name of his family and other close ones.
Apart from this, his benami properties also include flats and residential plots.
In a rather shocking revelation, Prajapati has also made his driver and many servants millionaires in a very clandestine manner.
The development comes at a time when the ED (Enforcement Directorate) recently quizzed Gayatri Prasad Prajapati’s son.
Cooling his heels in jail, Prajapati has also been charged of gang-raping a woman and her minor daughter along with his accomplices . A case was registered in this regard at the Gautampalli police station in Lucknow. On March 15, 2017, Prajapati surrendered to the police.
Apart from Prajapati, a charge sheet was filed against six other accused. On July 18, 2017, the POCSO Special Court in Lucknow ordered the case to be registered against all the seven accused.
Prajapati is also named in the mining scam which took place during the SP regime. In the mining scam, the CBI had registered a case against the former minister, after which the ED based the CBI FIR in August 2019 against five IAS officers, including the former ministers Gayatri Prasad Prajapati and B Chandrakala under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
Even though on September 4, three years, five months and 20 days later, the high court granted bail to Prajapati on the basis of medical background, the Supreme Court stayed the interim bail. He was again sent to jail and has been there since. He recently called for relief over COVID-19 infection fears.
