Govt report dismisses Patna zoo soil purchase scam

A government probe report has dismissed corruption in the purchase of soil for Patna zoo, giving relief to RJD president Lalu Prasad and his family who had been charged by BJP with being involved in it.
"The report submitted by state forest department has said that the estimate of soil purchase was of Rs 9 lakh and not Rs 90 lakh as alleged," Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh, to whom the report has been submitted, told PTI today.
"When the entire cost of transportation, loading and unloading of the said soil is added, it came to around Rs 41 lakh," he said.

Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi had on April 4 alleged that Lalu Prasad's elder son Tej Pratap Yadav, who is environment and forest minister, had earned Rs 90 lakh by dumping soil of an under construction mall to the zoo by a company to which he is associated with.
The zoo is under Tej Pratap Yadav's department.
Singh said that official procedure was duly followed in the case and prima facie no evidence of irregularity has come into light in zoo soil deal.

He said that the contractor who supplied soil to zoo has given details from where he sourced the soil for the Zoo.

"I have asked the department to verify the source of the soil," the CS said.
He, however, said that the report has no reference to soil sourced from the under-construction mall here being built by a company in which Tej Pratap and his Deputy Chief Minister brother Tejaswi Yadav are associated with.
In the wake of allegation of corruption in the soil purchase issue, Singh on April 6 directed forest department principal secretary Vivek Kumar Singh to submit him all the details of the matter.
The probe report provided relief to Lalu Prasad and his family as BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi was levelling charges of corruption against them.

RJD leaders termed the report as a clean chit to Lalu Prasad's family and demanded that Sushil Modi apologise to people.