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Bofors catapulted to centrestage again

Onkar Singh in New Delhi

The forthcoming general elections have once again brought the Bofors gun centrestage. Congressmen are singing paeans to the superior quality of the gun, which was proved beyond doubt in the recent operations in Kargil. The Bharatiya Janata Party and other political parties, who have been raking up the issue of corruption in the purchase of the gun for the last twelve years, now find themselves in a fix.

While Mani Shankar Aiyar gloats about his party finally being vindicated, Vijay Kumar Malhotra of the BJP is clearly on the defensive. "The quality of the gun was never in doubt," says Malhotra, not wanting to be left out.

As for Aiyar, he wrote in a recent column: "Every evening we have been seeing this with our eyes. The Pakistanis being pounded by our boys. If the BJP and others, then in the opposition, had been listened to 12 years ago we would have been saddled with inferior artillery. The country needs to ask itself why it sneered when the prime minister of the time, Rajiv Gandhi, fated to fall over the gun, warned his school-friend Arun Singh, the minister of state for defence, not be tempted by knee-jerk reaction."

Though the presidential sanction to prosecute S K Bhatnagar, the then defence secretary, and Madhav Sinh Solanki, foreign minister in the Narasimha Rao cabinet, was granted almost five months ago, the Central Bureau of Investigation is yet to finalise its chargesheet. Others who face prosecution in the Bofors case include businessman Win Chadha, his son Harsh Chadha, Ottavio Quattrochhi and his wife Maria Quattrochhi.

When asked why the delay in filing the chargesheet in the Bofors case, S M Khan, deputy principal information officer attached to the CBI told Rediff.com that the organization was busy giving the final touches to the chargesheet. "It is true that we had received the presidential sanction almost five months back but because of the huge amount of paper work, the progress has been a bit slow. Then, we are still to get one set of documents from the Swiss court and we don't know whose name is involved in that. I guess we would have to wait until the last set of the papers are received by the agency from the Swiss courts," says Khan.

While one section of the BJP is not willing to wait out the delay in prosecuting the case, others in the party understand the delay caused by the protracted legal battles being fought in the Swiss courts. "The Hindujas are fighting a legal battle in the Swiss courts. The Swiss cantonal court had rejected the plea of the Hindujas in June this year but the defendants have gone to the Swiss federal court with an appeal. Now the matter is pending before federal court. So we cannot do anything. We got to wait," says Arun Jaitley, senior advocate of the Supreme Court and a member of the BJP national executive.

Party leader Narinder Modi denied the allegation printed in a leading Hindi newspaper Punjab Kesari that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is trying to shield the Hindujas and he has told the CBI to go slow in this matter. "I don't give credence to this kind of falsehood being printed in the newspapers. To spread this kind of canard against Atalji is spreading malicious propaganda. Atalji is the first prime minister in India who brought the office of the prime minister under the preview of the Lok Pal bill and still people say things like that about him," said a disgusted Modi.

He also rejected the allegation that N R Wasan, a deputy director of CBI connected with the investigations in the Bofors case, was transferred back to Andhra Pradesh because he had objected to the inclusion of the name of Rajiv Gandhi in the list of the accused. "Nothing can be farther from the truth. I am told that Wasan had completed his tenure in the CBI and hence he was sent back to his parent cadre," said Modi.

S M Khan of the CBI confirmed Modi's view. "Wasan had been in the CBI for the last ten years and his tenure was over when he was shifted to his parent cadre. In any case the main people who are investigating the case are still there. R K Raghavan, director CBI, is personally looking after the investigation of the case. P C Sharma, special director CBI, is another important officer looking after the case. Transfer of a deputy director does not make any difference," said Khan.

The case was registered in January 1990 and the initial investigations were done by K Madhavan, Deputy Inspector General CBI, who later took voluntary retirement to take up his practice in the Supreme Court as a senior lawyer. Over a period of 12 years four different teams including the one led by 'Tiger' Joginder Singh have investigated the case.

"Before I took over the investigations only three witnesses had been questioned. The officers of the CBI have been globetrotting during the investigations and this is perhaps the costliest case the agency has ever investigated. I think over Rs 20 million have been spent so far," says Joginder Singh.

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