Ranchi: The daughter of disgraced former agriculture minister Yogendra Sao on Monday alleged that the Raghubar Das government and Jharkhand police were deliberately trying to malign her father and MLA mother Nirmala Devi for taking up the cause of people displaced by land acquisition for NTPC's Barkagaon project in Hazaribagh.

Amba Prasad - who is set to join the legal profession - has levelled the allegation in the wake of an FIR lodged by T. Gopal Krishna, group manager of NTPC's Pakri Barwadih project, five days ago at Barkagaon police station.

Krishna had accused six criminals - Bigal Paswan, Anil Bhuiyan, Amit Munda, Bhuneshwar Oraon, Mantu Soni and Kishore Soni - associated with extortion gang Jharkhand Tiger, which police believe is headed by Sao, of triggering explosions near the NTPC office on November 29 to intimidate contractors involved in coal mining.

The FIR, lodged under Sections 385, 386 and 387 (putting person in fear of injury in order to commit extortion) of IPC and Sections 3 and 4 of Explosive Substance Act, mentions Sao and his family members as the masterminds of the blast.

Mantu is a close aide of Sao as well as his witness before Election Commission in a probe into alleged horse trading by chief minister Raghubar Das and others in the 2016 Rajya Sabha polls.

Facing two dozen cases, Sao is currently lodged in Dumka Jail. His wife, who is a Congress MLA from Barkagaon, is facing five cases and is in Hazaribagh Jail.

"Just because my parents were fighting against land grabbing by NTPC and had refused to compromise for the sake of the farmers, they are being falsely implicated in the cases. Jharkhand police created the group Jharkhand Tiger and branded my father as its patron. False charge-sheets are being made to damage their reputation. Mantu is a political worker and close to my father," Amba said.

The Saos hogged limelight during violent protests against the NTPC project in October last year. Four were killed and around a dozen injured during a police firing following a mob attack, which police said was instigated by the Saos.

"I am planning to file a criminal petition for a judicial inquiry into the cases against my parents because they are false and politically motivated. This latest FIR is one such attempt to implicate them. We are hopeful of getting justice. We are being supported by the central leadership of the Congress," she said.

The latest breather for the Saos came in the form of a high court order that quashed the Hazaribagh district session court's dismissal of the discharged petition filed by former minister and his wife in the 2015 Dhenga firing case where six civilians and six policemen were injured during an anti-NTPC agitation.

"In June, we had moved the high court against the order passed by the Hazaribagh district session court. The court of Justice Rongon Mukhopadhyay quashed the order on October 31 and asked it on Friday to pass a fresh order in accordance with law within four week," Saos lawyer Abhishek Krishna Gupta said.