Former Bihar chief minister Rabri Devi's parents Shiv Prasad Choudhary and Sripati Devi were in an AC first class coach of the Sampark Kranti Express when a ticket-checking team found them without tickets at Chhapra station. The couple had boarded at Hajipur and were going to Siwan.

The incident left both Lalu, his family and railway officials red-faced and groping for excuses. Not surprisingly, railway officials vanished from the scene when the media confronted Choudhary and his wife at Siwan station.

Sources said while the ticket checking team of East Central Railway did not disturb the elderly couple, it was another team of North Eastern Railway zone NER jurisdiction starts from Chhapra which caught them.

It's a conspiracy, says Lalu's aide
Railway minister Lalu Prasad's parents-in-law were being booked for ticketless rail travel on Tuesday. His fatherin-law Shiv Prasad Choudhary told the ticket checker that he and his wife were ill and were returning from Patna after a health check-up. He pleaded that he did not have a ticket as the man who had come to see them off had forgotten to hand him the tickets.