Covid-19: Owner, manager of hotel booked for hosting Lalu Prasad Yadav's son

The owner and manager of a luxury hotel here have been booked by the police for facilitating the stay of RJD President Lalu Prasad Yadav's elder son Tej Pratap Yadav in violation of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions in Jharkhand, police said on Friday.

An FIR has been registered against the two with the Sadar police station under Epidemic Diseases Act which is in force in the state to check the spread of coronavirus, City Superintendent of police Saurav Kumar said.

Tej Pratap Yadav had stayed in the hotel on reaching Ranchi from Patna on Wednesday and from there had gone to meet his jailed father in RIMS Thursday.

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The case was lodged on the complaint of Circle Officer of the area under which the hotel is situated, the SP said. He said no hotel, lodge or Dharamshala are allowed to function during the lockdown period in Jharkhand.

The hotel authority hosted the former Bihar minister in a room in violation of the Covid regulations inviting legal action, he added.

Yadav was with his father the previous day for nearly two and a half hours in the director's bungalow of Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences, where the RJD supremo was shifted recently as a precautionary measure for Covid-19.

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The RJD chief who has been convicted in several cases of multi-crore fodder scam is lodged in RIMS, Ranchi. Sources said the RJD chief had summoned his son in the backdrop of his utterances against senior RJD leader and former union minister Raghubansh Prasad Singh.

After a reprimand from father, Yadav described Singh as his "guardian" against whom he bore no ill-feeling. The maverick leader had made castigating remarks against the former union minister recently over his resignation from RJD's vice president post in protest against efforts to induct muscleman former LJP MP Rama Singh into the party.

He is also understood to have a discussion with his father on assembly election in Bihar due in October-November.

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Yadav's father-in-law Chandrika Roy recently left RJD to join JD(U) and has hinted that his daughter Aishwarya might enter in the poll fray. Yadav's marriage with Aishwarya has gone sour and their divorce case is pending with a Patna court.

The former Health Minister of Bihar is currently MLA from Mahua in Vaishali district and there are speculations in the media that his estranged wife might fight against him in the election.