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Friday, Apr 09, 2004

National

National

Timing suspect: Congress

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, APRIL 8. The Congress today charged the Bharatiya Janata Party with "flogging a dead horse" on the Bofors issue and questioned the motive and timing of the publication of the report in an English daily.

Responding to the report in The Asian Age, quoting a Swedish police officer's suggestion that the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, be questioned in the Bofors case, and a set of questions posed by the BJP spokesperson, Arun Jaitley, the Congress sought to know how there could be fresh questioning when no case exists.

"Ms. Sonia Gandhi was not accused by the Central Bureau of Investigation which probed the case for 13 years... there was a case against Rajiv Gandhi and the case is dead. You cannot be prosecuted for the same offence twice," the party spokesperson, Kapil Sibal, said. "It will be contempt of court."

On the BJP stand that Ms. Gandhi, who was aspiring for the highest political office in the country, should be willing to break her silence and share with the country the facts that she knows about the case, Mr. Sibal said the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, should come clean and tell what they know about the Tehelka deal, the petrol pump allotment scandal, the land allotment and all other scams.

The court had rejected the argument questioning the involvement of Snam Progetti's representative with AE Services when the organisation was not in the defence business and payment of commission by AE Services, ostensibly controlled by Ottavio Quattrocchi, before the gun deal was signed.

Mr. Sibal said it was wrong to state that after the entry of AE Services in the Bofors transaction, the preferences of the trials switched over from Sofma to Bofors. On the contrary, the Army's technical evaluation committee had recommended the Bofors gun and the political leadership did not interfere with it.

To the BJP query as to why Mr. Quattrocchi was allowed to leave India, Mr. Sibal said that despite the request for extradition the Malaysian courts had turned it down since the CBI could not produce any evidence against him.

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