Patna, June 14: The JDU today stood behind its Rajya Sabha MP Anil Sahani — implicated by the CBI in scams related to leave travel concession (LTC) for lawmakers — alleging a “witch-hunt” on the part of the ruling BJP at the Centre.

“It is a three to four-year-old case in which then Rajya Sabha chairman had given Sahani a clean chit. The BJP has been using the investigating agency to blackmail its prime opponents — the Trinamool Congress in Bengal and the JDU in Bihar,” the party general secretary and national spokesman, K.C. Tyagi, said.

The CBI has registered six cases against the sitting and former Rajya Sabha MPs for allegedly filing fake bills of their air travel to claim reimbursement. The cases have their roots in the interrogation of Anil Sahani against whom a similar case was filed last November. It was Sahani, who, in the course of interrogation, spilled the beans that the practice of submitting fake bills was rampant among MPs, giving the investing agency a lead to pursue its investigation further.

Tyagi said: “Anil Sahani has been a leader of impeccable character throughout his career. But the BJP is out to malign the image of its opponent parties. It has got some Trinamool MPs implicated the way it has got our party MP implicated”.