Nitish in trouble as Delhi High Court seeks petition in Rs 320-crore railway sleeper case

Patna,(BiharTimes): A Division Bench of Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justice Manmohan of the Delhi High Court on Friday asked a petitioner to file a writ petition in a Rs 320-crore railway sleeper case in which the then railway minister and the present Bihar chief minister, Nitish Kumar, name had come up.
The case pertains to irregularities in the purchase of concrete sleepers between March 2001 and May 2004.

The bench while hearing a Letter Patent Appeal (LPA) advised the petitioner, Mithilesh Kumar Singh to file a fresh petition in the case. His lawyer Avdhesh Kumar Singh said that the petition would be filed next week.

It needs to be recalled that the Central Bureau of Investigation was asked to probe the case by a Parliamentary Standing Committee in March 2005.

The petitioners said that the then Railway Minister awarded a Rs 320 cr contract for manufacturing 160 lakh concrete sleepers to M/s Daya Engineering Works, Gaya, a company belonging to the late Dayanand Sahay and Dhirendra Agarwal. Sahay and Agarwal were close relatives and associated to a prominent political family of Bihar. While Sahay was a Rajya Sabha MP of Congress his brother-in-law Agrawal was a BJP MP. Sahay’s wife Sushila Sahay served as a minister in the Janata Party government in Bihar in 1977.