Amarjeet Sinha in Patna on Friday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, July 19: The prime accused in the midday meal tragedy — Gandaman Primary School principal Meena Devi — remained at large three days after the incident, while the state machinery remained busy today showcasing the success of the food scheme and playing the passing-the-buck game.

Education department principal secretary Amarjeet Sinha did not rule out the possibility of the potato-soya bean curry been cooked in poison but continued with the blame game over the tragedy. He denied that his department received any alert from union human resource development ministry about poor execution of the midday meal scheme in 12 districts, including Saran.

“It was not an alert but the annual status of education report (ASER), which suggested way as to how the midday meal scheme could be improved in Bihar,” Sinha pointed out repeating the future programmes to improve the scheme.

He and the director of the midday meal in Bihar, R. Laxmanan, then charted the success story of the scheme in the state and the changes in store to make it even more effective while reacting with the reporters. The duo hardly had anything satisfactory on the probe front, though.

When quizzed, Laxmanan tendered his apologies to the families of those who lost their children because of the alleged negligence.

“I had been to the village and have apologised to the families. Our sympathies are with them,” he told The Telegraph.

As Laxmanan and Sinha spent the day pointing out the steps the state government was planning to undertake to make the midday meal scheme a “safe success”, Meena Devi, the only named accused in the meal tragedy FIR lodged at the Masrakh police station, dodged police for another day.

Besides its failure to spot Meena Devi, the Saran district administration is yet to properly identify the shop from which edibles for the school were bought.

Saran district magistrate Abhijeet Sinha told The Telegraph today: “The shop from where the edibles for the school were bought has not been identified properly until now. So the administration has not been able to seal the shop for now.”

He added: “The FIR names Meena Devi and others. The name of her husband, Arjun Rai, does not figure in the FIR. The police have been trying hard to arrest them but until now they have remained traceless. She was successful in fleeing taking advantage of the pandemonium in the village on July 16. The door of her house is locked and her husband too is absconding. Meena Devi has been booked under sections 302, 328 and 120 (b) of the IPC.

Sources pointed out that the forensic report of the food samples were expected by tomorrow morning.

Saran commissioner Shashi Shekhar Sharma today submitted the report on Dhamasati-Gandaman school midday meal incident. Sources said the five-page report clearly stated the headmistress Meena Kumari did not follow the instructions regarding implementation of midday meal.