Click to play videoNew Delhi: The process started in 2004 to give a silent burial to the Bofors case when the UPA Government came to power and refused to let the CBI file an appeal against Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi in the Supreme Court.
And then in late 2005, the Government quietly sent a former additional solicitor general to London to give a green signal to authorities in the United Kingdom to defreeze the two London bank accounts of Quattrocchi which allegedly has the Bofors kickback money. The accounts were frozen after a request from the CBI.
Unexpectedly, Quattrocchi was arrested in 2007 in Argentina, based on the Interpol Red Corner notice in the same case. That was the closest India came to getting the Italian middleman extradited. But the country lost the case after allegations were made that the Indian government lawyers handed over official documents to Quattrocchi and helped him go scot free.
In the same year, the Chief Swedish Investigator of the Bofors scam Stien Lindstrom in Sweden spoke on camera for the first time in 20 years. Lindstrom spoke to CNN-IBN and pointed all fingers at Quattrocchi receiving kickback in the Bofors arms deal.
But in April 2009, the Government inched closer to finish the case against Quattrocchi. CBI asked Interpol to drop the Red Corner Notice against him and even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh supported the move.
And on Tuesday when the Government told the Supreme Court that the case should finally be closed for lack of evidence, the Opposition BJP went on a warpath even as the Congress defended the action.
“CBI has repeatedly tried to save Quattrocchi because of political pressures. And all this is because Quattrocchi had links with higher ups,” BJP Spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
For the last 20 years the Government of India has spent crores of rupees to investigate the Bofors arms deal. But now the Government is rebutting its own case.
However, for Quattrocchi this is not the end of the road. On October 3 when the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate at Tis Hazari Court hears this matter, he will decide whether to permit CBI to withdraw its case or not.
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