The Delhi High Court on Monday allowed journalist Rana Ayyub to travel abroad, quashing the Enforcement Directorate's (ED) restrictions citing apprehensions that she may evade an ongoing probe into the money-laundering case. A single-judge bench of Justice Chandra Dhari Singh allowed her writ petition while imposing certain conditions, such as depositing money and inform the ED where she is staying and share her phone number. Ayyub had approached the High Court to let her travel to London and pleaded to quash the lookout circular or direction preventing her from travelling abroad.
She is slated to travel from London to Rome on April 5 to address the Keynote Speech at the Perugia International Journalism Festival, 2022, where she is scheduled to speak about the state of journalism in India, then return to Mumbai on April 11 via London. An inquiry was initiated by the Mumbai Zonal Office of the ED under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) against Ayyub last year over funds received by her from the crowd-funding campaigns to provide help to the Covid-19 affected people in the second wave of the pandemic.
