Patna, Jan. 30: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sleuths today searched the ancestral house of R.C. Thakur, one of the 13 accused in Adarsh Co-operative Housing Society (ACHS) scam, in Benipatti subdivision of Madhubani district.

A CBI team led by a deputy superintendent of police visited Madhiya village under Bisfi police station on the border of Madhubani and Darbhanga districts, about 200km north-east of Bihar capital, and interrogated Thakur’s relatives.

The kin of the accused told the visiting team that Thakur had not visited his native place for the past several years.

Sources said no incriminating documents related to the land scam were seized during the search operation.

The CBI team later visited Town police station in Darbhanga district and collected some information on Thakur.

The search operation, which began around 10am, continued for about four-five hours. The members of the search team failed to lay their hands on any important document related to the scam.

“We carried out search operation at Thakur’s ancestral house in Madhubani district,” a senior CBI official posted in Patna told The Telegraph.

The officer said the raid was conducted on the directive of the CBI directorate.

“We have nothing to do with the operation as the case is related to Maharashtra,” the officer said, adding that the FIR registered by the CBI named Thakur as a key land scamster.

The sources said the CBI team came to know about a huge property amassed by Thakur in Nagpur, Thane and Mumbai.

“He was posted as divisional officer in estate office in the Indian Army’s Colaba division in south Mumbai till a few years ago,” said a resident of his ancestral village.

Thakur’s son, Navin, is a pilot posted in Nagpur and is married to Arti, daughter of a Nagpur-based businessman. The marriage was solemnised about a decade ago in a posh hotel of Nagpur, the sources said. Thakur’s daughter is married to a resident of Nepal and runs a nursing home in Kathmandu.

The sources said Thakur had played the role of a negotiator with the military authorities as he had good relationship with top officials of the army, including Major General (retd) T.K. Kaul.

Then a sub-area commander, Kaul had allegedly presided over the negotiations when he was the secretary of the housing cooperative society.

The phenomenal rise of Thakur in the past decade made the residents of his native village suspicious.

His connections in the corridors of power in Maharashtra had once become a topic of discussion among them.