Patna: On October 18, when a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court refused to entertain the CBI’s plea to cancel the bail of Bihar’s deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav in an Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) case, it came across as an indictment of the Central agency’s credibility in the fresh cases it has pursued against Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad Yadav and members of his family since the veteran leader was released on bail in the fodder scam cases.Rejecting the agency’s plea that Tejashwi had “blatantly abused the liberty granted to him”, the court stated that it could not find any “specific ground” in the CBI’s allegation.Four days earlier, on October 15, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, addressing a public meeting at Samastipur, had said, “They [the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the CBI] lodged cases against Laluji and his family when we [the Janata Dal (United) (JDU) and RJD) came together. Thus, we were separated. Now that we have come together again after five years apart, they are making new charges against Laluji and his family members. What type of elements are they?”It was probably the first time that Nitish had ever questioned the legitimacy of a criminal case lodged by the CBI against Lalu and his family. Five year actionsGiven the fact that Nitish is invariably measured in his public statements, he must have had a very strong reason to question the BJP and the CBI on the IRCTC cases.The Bihar chief minister was the Union minister of railways in the 1999-2004 Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. In this position, he was known for his efficiency, diligence, probity and performance. Thus, it would be foolhardy to underestimate Nitish’s knowledge of the railways and their functioning. In 2004, Lalu replaced Nitish as the Union railway minister. The IRCTC cases registered against Lalu and his family – one related to a ‘land for job’ scam and another related to awarding the operational contract of two IRCTCs hotels to private operators – have their roots in Lalu’s tenure as the railway minister in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government between 2004 and 2009.Tejashwi, whom the CBI has implicated in an IRCTC case, was a minor when his father was the railway minister. The CBI had filed these cases against Lalu and members of his family in July 2017, eight years after Lalu ceased to be the railway minister and three years after Narendra Modi became prime minister. It was also two years after Tejashwi became the deputy CM in the Mahagathbandhan government headed by Nitish.Moreover, Lalu performed very well in his position as the railways minister. No party, not even the BJP, objected to his performance. Towards the end of the Manmohan Singh-led government in 2012-13, while BJP leaders like the late Arun Jaitley, the late Sushma Swaraj and Narendra Modi attacked the UPA about the 2G and 3G spectrum scams and the coal scam, they never said a word about any scam in the railways.But suddenly, in July 2017, the CBI raided Lalu’s Patna home and his other establishments and filed cases against him and members of his family, implicating Tejashwi in the IRCTC scam, but not any of Lalu’s other children. When this happened, Nitish Kumar asked Tejashwi to explain the charges against him and then left the Mahagathbandhan, citing his reservations against corruption cases as his reason.As soon as Nitish joined the National Democratic Alliance, the coalition of parties led by the BJP, the CBI fell silent on the IRCTC cases. Tejashwi, Lalu and Rabri Devi received anticipatory bail in the cases in 2019 and the CBI did not challenge their bail in the higher court. However, when Nitish attended an iftar party hosted by the RJD this May, the CBI suddenly became active on the IRCTC cases again. It petitioned the CBI court for the cancellation of bail to Tejashwi after he became deputy CM again under Nitish.Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad after their meeting with Congress interim President Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi, September 25, 2022. Photo: PTI /Kamal KishoreKeeping mumThe Bihar chief minister is known to seldom comment on investigating agencies and court proceedings in any matter. Even when his relationship with Lalu was at its bitterest in the late 1990s and in 2005, when he replaced Rabri Devi as chief minister, Nitish said not a word about the corruption cases against Lalu or how the CBI was dealing with them. He also never publicly reacted to the courts’ verdicts against Lalu in the protracted cases that emerged from the fodder scam.“Better you ask me about issues of politics and governance. My battle with Laluji is political in nature; we wish to replace him through the political process,” Nitish had told me in 2002 when I interviewed him for The Statesman and pushed him to speak about the charges against Lalu, who had been incarcerated at that time in the fodder scam cases. Nalin Verma is a senior journalist, author and professor of journalism and mass communication at Invertis University, Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh.