Taint Tales From Lalooland

Way back in 1973, when Shib Prasad Choudhary, a modest farmer of Salarkalan in Gopalganj district, broke the news to his wife that he had fixed the marriage of their daughter Rabri with Laloo Prasad Yadav from Phulwaria, she was far from pleased. For, somebody had ­already told her that the groom-to-be lived in a thatched house, unlike her daughter who had a concrete roof over her head. It took Choudhary some time to convince her, saying Rabri was not going to marry a house but somebody who looked too promising to lead a life in penury for long.

Choudhary was not wide of the mark. More than four decades later, Laloo is being labelled as the biggest zamindar of Bihar, accused of having amassed assets worth more than Rs 1,500 crore for his family through unscrupulous means.

The allegations are now being probed by three central investigating agencies—Income-tax, CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED)—which have raided his family members in quick succession recently to trace the sources of the riches of a political dynasty that owes its rise primarily...