In an accidental revelation about a forgotten figure of undivided Bihar’s `950-crore fodder scam, RJD chief and scam accused Lalu Prasad Yadav’s former private secretary Mukul Kapoor, who was missing since 16 years, is learnt to have purchased two flats in Patna this month.
Kapoor, who was Yadav’s personal secretary between 1990 and 1996, had mysteriously gone missing from public view, especially from the probing sight of the CBI which is prosecuting the scam cases, right since the massive scam surfaced in 1996. Reports about Kapoor’s purchasing two flats at `58 lakhs in a prime locality in Patna on February 7 are being talked about in Bihar’s political circles as the glimpse of the “tip of an iceberg of the fodder scam”.
Documents from the registry office showing Kapoor’s purchase of the two flats in an apartment block on Bailey Road, according to a report aired on a television news channel, have pointed at possibilities of him being around all these years under political protection. The president of the apartment block, former Union minister Nagmani, said Kapoor got the two flats “as his share for being a member of the housing society”.
“We do not know where he (Kapoor) got the money,” said Nagmani, who was in Bihar’s ruling JD(U) till a few years back and his wife Suchitra Sinha was a minister in the Nitish Kumar-led government’s Cabinet.
The CBI had carried out several raids purportedly for Kapoor’s arrest in the wake of the fodder scam with the investigating agency’s sleuths having reportedly learnt that Kapoor knew all about the scam and also hugely gained by being a part of the illegal scheme.
In July 2009, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Bihar Assembly, chaired by sitting Leader of the Opposition Abdul Bari Siddiqui of the RJD, had said it was impossible to recover `2.5 lakhs taken as loan by Kapoor as he went to Singapore, US and UK among other countries along with then CM Lalu Prasad Yadav to bring foreign investments to Bihar.