Patna(IANS) : Former Patna district magistrate Gautam Goswami has worn many hats: doctor, popular bureaucrat, scam accused and prisoner. He is also an HIV/AIDS counsellor now.
Goswami, a key accused in the Rs.170 million ($3.86 million) Bihar flood relief scam of 2004, will provides help to HIV/AIDS patients as a physician-cum-counsellor free of cost while he is out of Beur Jail on bail.
Before joining the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Goswami was a doctor who had won a gold medal when he got his medical degree. He is upbeat and confident with the initial response to his initiative.
“I will not charge anything for counselling HIV/AIDS patients. It will be free of cost, a voluntary work to make a difference,” said Goswami, looking fresh and calm.
He said he decided to provide counselling to HIV/AIDS patients to give them confidence and self-respect. “I strongly believe that proper counselling is no less important than right line of treatment,” Goswami told IANS Saturday.
He admitted that it was not easy for him to become a fulltime activist to help HIV/AIDS patients. “At best I will give two hours four days a week. I have other things to do also.”
He began his new innings Saturday at Vaccine Clinic, a free counselling centre here that was launched Friday.
Goswami recalled that it was when he was behind the bars that he decided to take up social service.
After spending over a year, he was granted bail by the Patna High Court last year.
He is an accused in the case relating to the alleged swindling of funds meant for providing relief to flood-hit people of north Bihar in 2004. An inquiry into the matter by the state vigilance bureau was ordered when president’s rule was in force in the state in 2005.
A first information report (FIR) was filed against Goswami and 27 others in the case on May 28, 2005. Later, all the accused and scam kingpin Santosh Jha, a relief material supplier, surrendered and were sent to jail.
The registration of a case against Goswami, who had earlier been named by Time magazine as a Young Asian Hero, had shocked the nation.