Ranchi, July 6: The ?Asian hero? may have turned into a rogue, a villain for the nation, but his school teachers here appear to believe that Gautam Goswami has been framed.

The former district magistrate of Patna, the IAS officer surrendered recently before the court and was sent to jail for his alleged involvement in the ?flood relief scam? of Bihar.

But Goswami, who studied for eight long years at the Vikas Vidyalaya, has his teachers rooting for his innocence. They seem to have complete faith in his integrity and are convinced that he fell a prey to a well-hatched conspiracy.

Their vigorous defence of the IAS officer is partly due to the fact that they had held up Goswami as a role model in the school. His brilliant academic results, his training as a doctor and subsequent entry into the hallowed portals of the IAS and, finally, the Time magazine hailing him as an ?Asian hero? for exemplary relief work had added to his sheen.

Students at Vikas Vidyalaya, teachers said, were always asked to emulate Goswami, who was held up as a brilliant student who had done the school proud. But in the wake of his involvement in the flood-relief scam and when he went underground, the students at Vikas Vidyalaya have started asking uncomfortable questions about him, teachers reluctantly admit.

S. Kumar, who had taught the IAS officer, remembers him as a frail and soft-spoken boy ?who had loads of talent?.

?He now has an imposing presence but it was not so in school,? recalls Kumar, who cannot believe that one of his favourite students is now in jail for criminal conspiracy.

?But when you are a bureaucrat and there are ministers and senior officers above you, I guess you have to do their bidding,? he adds reluctantly.

A.C. Tripathi, his biology teacher, remembers his student?s ?sharp intellect? and declares without hesitation that at Vikas Vidyalaya, he had turned into an icon of sorts. His arrest has raised a storm in the school and some students have started jeering him. But Tripathi firmly believes in Goswami?s innocence.

?He could not have done it; I do not believe the charges and am convinced that he has become a victim of a plot,? he has been repeating to his current crop of students.

Goswami got admitted to Class V in Vikas Vidyalaya in 1972. He passed out of school in 1980 and was one of the toppers. He went on to BHU to study medicine and won a gold medal before getting selected for the IAS.

Not all teachers, however, has a kind word to say. People, they feel, change and succumb to both pressure and greed.