Hero Turns Villain ; the Rs 17 Crore Flood Relief Scam Puts the Spotlight On Prime Accused Goswami. The Former Patna District Magistrate, an Asian Hero, Is Now a Fugitive with a Red-Corner Alert Against Him.
Summary
In October last year Gautam Goswami was recognised by Time magazine as one of Asia's young heroes. The magazine cited the relief efforts undertaken by the doctor-turned-bureaucrat during the July 2004 flash floods in Bihar as one of his achievements. Last week, the state police named the former Patna district magistrate (DM) one of the prime accused in a scam in which flood relief funds worth Rs 17 crore were allegedly diverted to a private company. It also launched a nation-wide hunt for Goswami who is on the run. While the state Vigilance Department has named 28 people in the scam, the other prime accused is Santosh Jha, a contractor and political operator who had unsuccessfully contested the February assembly election on an LJP ticket.
Among the five people arrested so far are the then director of the Bihar Small Scale Industries Corporation (BSSIC) which supplied flood relief material, the manager of IDBI Bank in Patna where a fake account was opened to route the money, and the then additional DM of Patna. While there are conflicting reports on Goswami's whereabouts, Jha came out of hiding to surrender before the designated vigilance judge on June 1.See the full content of this document
Extract
Hero Turns Villain ; the Rs 17 Crore Flood Relief Scam Puts the Spotlight On Prime Accused Goswami. The Former Patna District Magistrate, an Asian Hero, Is Now a Fugitive with a Red-Corner Alert Against Him.
This is not the first time Goswami, 38, an MD from the Banaras Hindu University and a 1991 batch IAS officer, has hit the headlines. On the eve of the Lok Sabha elections last year, he stopped...
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