Court Wants Aiims Team To Verify Laloo Medical Reports

The designated CBI court yesterday said it would ask the director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to constitute a board of doctors to examine various medical reports of former Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav, an accused in the fodder scam.

Special judge SK Lal in his order on a CBI petition opposing the move of the medical board constituted by the Bihar government to shift Yadav for undertaking tests at Escorts heart hospital, New Delhi, asked the superintendent of the special jail and convenor of the board to send all reports on the condition of Yadav to the court by today.

Lal directed DIG (CBI) R N Kaul to collect all papers to be submitted by the convenor of the medical board, ARC Sinha, from the court and immediately rush to New Delhi to urge the AIIMS director to constitute a board to examine the reports and suggest if a stress thalium test was required on Yadav.

Sinha had told the court it was necessary to shift Yadav to the Escorts hospital for the test.

The special judge said if the board to be constituted by the AIIMS director felt Yadav needed thalium test, it would be performed at AIIMS and not at Escorts hospital as suggested by the medical board constituted by the state government.

Lal asked Sinha to clarify how doctors from the Escorts hospital, including its executive director Naresh Trehan, were to be brought to the state capital by a special aircraft and allowed to examine the former Chief Minister, under detention in the fodder scam, without prior permission of the court.

The court directed the superintendent of the makeshift jail, where Yadav was incarcerated before being shifted to hospital, to send a list of visitors who had met the former Chief Minister so far at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences where he is undergoing treatment.

The matter is very serious ... The jail superintendent has to explain as to how so many people were allowed to meet the undertrial who, as has been claimed, is suffering from serious heart problem, the judge said.

The court took serious exception to the report submitted by the board which sought to make the basis for shifting the former Chief Minister to New Delhi and said it appears the board has tried to interfere with the judicial process.

I had on August 6 asked for a report on the undertrials ailment from the director of IGIMS but the convenor of the board overacted and sent the report himself bypassing the director, the judge observed. He also took exception to the case law referred to him by Sinha, convenor of the board, in Rajan Pillai vs Union of India case that an undertrial cannot be denied the fundamental right to life.

I have not found such a case law anywhere, the judge said.

Lal said the board convenor had virtually argued the case on behalf of Yadav for being shifted to Delhi.