Patna: Senior bureaucrat Gautam Goswami, who was Time magazine’s ‘Asian Hero’ in 2004 but later was booked for corruption, died of pancreatic cancer in Patna on Tuesday. He was 41.
Goswami, a 1991 batch IAS officer, has been battling for life for the past several months and his end came at a private nursing home. He is survived by his doctor wife and
two sons.
A winner of prestigious Time Magazine's "Young Asian Achiever Award", Goswami, a former District Magistrate of Patna, was an accused in the multi-crore Bihar flood relief scam.
Goswami, a MBBS degree holder, was shifted from Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) to the private nursing home on Saturday after his condition worsened due to kidney impairment.
Goswami, suspended for his alleged involvement in the flood relief scam, was first admitted to IGIMS on the night of December 31. He was shifted to Rajeshwar Nursing home for dialysis after his condition deteriorated at the IGIMS.
The state government had on December 8 reinstated him in the service on health grounds.
Goswami had shot into limelight when as District Magistrate in 2004 he asked senior BJP leader and then Deputy prime minister L K Advani to leave the dais during an election meeting at Patna midway for canvassing beyond the prescribed time limit set by the Election Commission.
He had earned laurels for his efforts in reaching out relief to flood victims in 2004. But less than a year later, he was accused of involvement in defalcation of relief funds along with Anirudh Prasad Yadav alias Sadhu Yadav brother-in-law of Railway minister Lalu Prasad and 27 others.
A vigilance inquiry was ordered into the Rs 18.5 crore defalcation on April 26,2005, while Goswami resigned from the IAS and joined the Sahara Group.
But the Special Vigilance Court rejected his anticipatory bail plea on June 6 that year and the Sahara group management sacked him from the post of Vice-president.
Goswami withdrew his resignation from IAS on June 17, 2005 before it could be accepted and was placed under suspension on June 30 after his bail petition was rejected. He was released on bail by the Patna High Court on November 10, 2006.
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