Unrelated photos shared as pictures of unaccounted money and jewellery seized by ED at Lalu Prasad Yadav’s home - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
March 13, 2023
A collage of images is being shared on social media claiming them as pictures of money, jewellery and unaccounted documents seized during the recent raid on Lalu Prasad Yadav’s residence. The post claims that the officials recovered illegal assets worth Rs. 600 crores during their search operations in premises allegedly associated with Lalu Yadav’s family. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Pictures showing the illegal money, unaccounted ornaments and documents seized during the raid on Lalu Prasad Yadav’s house.
Fact: The first picture shared in the post shows an old photo from the ED raid that was conducted at an e-gaming firm in Kolkata in September 2022. Another two pictures shared in the post show the unaccounted jewellery seized by the ED during the raid on Ponzi scheme operators in Nagpur and Mumbai. The other two images show the pictures of unaccounted cash, documents and jewellery recovered by ED during the raids on Lalu Prasad Yadav’s family and close associates in connection with the railways land-for-job scam. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
The post shared a collage of five images. Let’s find the details of each image one by one.
Image 1:
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, the same photo was found in an article published by the ‘Telangana Today’ news website on 11 September 2022. Sharing the photo, the news website reported that the Enforcement Directorate had recovered over Rs. 17 crores of unaccounted cash during a raid on an e-gaming firm businessman in Kolkata. Reporting the same, several news websites published articles and videos in September 2022.
Image 2 & Image 5:
On reverse image search of these photos, the same photos were found in articles published by the ‘Hindustan Times’ and ‘Indian Express’ news websites on 08 March 2023. They can be seen here and here. Sharing these photos, the news websites reported that ED had recovered unaccounted jewellery worth Rs 5.51 crore and cash worth Rs 1.21 crore during the raid at the premises of Ponzi scam operators in Nagpur and Mumbai. The photos do not show the pictures from the ED raids at the premises of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s family, related to the railways land-for-Job scam.
Image 3 and Image 4:
On reverse image search, the same photos were found in a tweet published by ANI on 11 March 2023. ANI published these images reporting the ED statement on raids conducted at 24 locations allegedly associated to Lalu Prasad Yadav’s family in connection with the investigation in the railways land-for-Job scam. ED in the statement stated that they had recovered unaccounted cash of Rs 1 crore, foreign currency including US$ 1900, 500 gms gold bullion and more than 1.5kg of gold jewellery during their raids conducted in connection to the land-for-job money laundering scam.
ED conducted searches at 24 locations in the Railways Land for Job Scam, resulting in the recovery of unaccounted cash of Rs 1 Crore, foreign currency including US$ 1900, 540 gms gold bullion and more than 1.5 kg of gold jewellery: ED pic.twitter.com/fkPLmUpgPA
The ED on 10 March 2023 conducted nationwide search operations on at least 24 premises allegedly associated with Lalu Prasad Yadav’s family in connection with the investigation in the railways land-for-job money laundering case. ED released a statement on 11 March 2023 stating that they had detected the proceeds of crime amounting to approximately Rs 600 crore during their search operation.
Searches resulted in detection of Proceeds of Crime amounting to Rs 600 Crore approximately at this point of time .
To sum it up, unrelated pictures are being shared as the pictures of unaccounted money and jewellery seized by ED at Lalu Prasad Yadav’s house in connection to the railways land-for-job scam.