Hero as villain

Gautam Goswami’s surrender follows a month-long official search that so spectacularly failed to trace him. The absconding former Patna DM could choose the moment to give himself up to the court, two long months after this paper had bared the multi-crore flood relief scam in which he is an invaluable protagonist. A series of investigative reports in the Express that began in late April had meticulously followed up clues that no one in government had evidently bothered to heed. It added up to a paper trail of forgeries and fraud in administration. It added up, finally, to the story of the missing Rs 17 crore meant as flood relief that never reached those people whose lives were devastated by the rising waters last year in North Bihar. Goswami, on whose watch the staggering scandal played out, and without whose active involvement it would allegedly not have taken place, had since put in his papers and glided into a private company before the government even accepted his resignation. No, it will take much more than his surrender now for this newspaper to be hopeful that the horrific story it broke will reach a just and humane closure.

It will take sincere and committed follow-through. Having allowed the flood scam-accused an unconscionably long rope so far, the government must make amends. It must now ensure that this case does not meet the fate that awaits the overwhelming number of high-profile cases once the flashbulbs stop popping. They either settle into oblivion without trace. Or they meander on, in fits and false starts, without any real hope of justice. The culprits of the flood relief scam must be brought to book within a sharply defined time frame. It is also the responsibility of the government’s investigative agencies to probe the wider culpability in the scam. There must arguably have been a larger network out there, to make sure that government funds were misappropriated in such flagrant ways. Those warning bells, those institutional checks and balances, must be pinpointed now in Patna and in Bihar, the ones that failed to work.

It is an ironic moment as the former DM goes into the jail he inspected not so many months ago. But for this moment to embody hope, for it to renew a waning public trust in the system’s capacities to deliver, much hard work remains to be done.