Court clears Lalu Prasad Yadav's foreign tour

Patna, June 19: In partial relaxation of the blanket ban imposed on Railway Minister Lalu Prasad's foreign junkets till the conclusion of hearing in the fodder scam case, a special court here today granted him permission to undertake his proposed tour of Europe from June 23 to 28.

Special CBI judge Munilal Paswan, in his judgement pronounced after hearing a petition seeking permission for the tour, noted that Mr Prasad would lead an Indian delegation to various European countries for the development of Indian Railways.

The petition seeking permission for the trip abroad was filed on June 13 and CBI's deputy legal advisor L R Ansari did not oppose the plea when it came up for hearing today.

Earlier, the court had asked the Mr Prasad's counsel to submit the original copies of the tour programme, which was complied with.

Mr Prasad would lead a high-level delegation to Britain, France, Austria, Italy and Germany. Mr Yadav would participate in the meeting of Union of International Railways in Paris and ink an agreement at Rome with Italian National Railways.

Similar permission had earlier been granted also to the Railway Minister to visit Pakistan as a member of a delegation and the visit for attending the funeral of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

UNI