More about News
Vaishakh Shukla 9, Kaliyug Varsha 5114.
First, the Chandrasekhar government instructed its counsel to argue against the CBI to terminate the prosecution. But K Madhavan, the CBI official who headed the probe, rose up in the court, openly exposed the government, ruined the efforts to bury the case and resigned the job. Afterwards the wily Narasimha Rao struck a deal to allow Q to leave India in return for political truce for his government from 10 Janpath. Later, Madhav Singh Solanki, external affairs minister, unsuccessfully tried to forge a letter in India government’s name to the Swiss government asking the latter to junk the case. The United Front government in power between 1996-’98 too was just a Congress proxy. But as it could do nothing, Sonia pulled it down. She then claimed the support of 272 MPs and was desperate to become prime minister. But Mulayam Singh blew her claim off. Her inner voice that advised her not to become prime minister in 2004 was of course silent then.
A year earlier, in 1997, she stormed into the Congress headquarters and occupied the party president’s chair when the reigning President Sitaram Kesri had gone to the toilet to ease himself and was kept locked inside long enough to make the presidential changeover smooth. As Congress president, she first gave a clean chit to Q, even asked the NDA government for proof against him! Keen to avoid hostility with Sonia, who had become the Opposition Leader in 1998, the NDA too preferred to be soft on Q. Result, NDA’s relation with Sonia then was better than UPA’s relation with NDA now. Later, under the UPA regime, Q was allowed to withdraw his booty from Bofors that the CBI had got frozen in a UK bank. Still later, during the 2009 elections, Manmohan Singh lamented how Q was being hounded by red corner notice from the government for over a decade and how that was harming India’s image abroad. Predictably, after elections, the red corner notice was off. Finally the UPA closed the case against Q, saving Q from risk of arrest, custodial interrogation and prosecution. With the result the story of how he got the Rajiv government to do what he wanted done for Bofors, precisely by the schedule he wanted, remains untold by him till now.
The publicly known facts about Q’s role tell volumes. Q had promised Bofors in September 1985 that, if they agreed to a 3 per cent fee to him (equal to some $36 million, `180 cr now) he would deliver the contract in their favour from Rajiv’s government before March 31, 1986. Q would lose that fortune if the gun contract was delivered even a day later. And he did finally deliver them the contract seven days ahead of the agreed date! Rajiv Gandhi did sign the Bofors gun contract on March 24. Unless Q was controlling the signature on the contract for Bofors he could not have dared to guarantee delivery by March 31. That’s why Lindstrom had consistently said that Sonia ought to be interrogated as a suspect — yes, as a suspect — in the Bofors case. Yet, a desperate Congress has now clutched at Lindstrom’s statement that Rajiv did not benefit by the bribe, forgetting that he had also called Sonia as a suspect. The BJP in Parliament mysteriously left her out and highlighted only Q knowing that Q’s importance was because of Sonia. See what happened in the next 48 hours.
A day after BJP showed such unbelievable deference to Sonia came the news that Bangaru Laxman, the former BJP president, had been indicted for taking `1 lakh — yes just `1 lakh — as illegal gratification. In a daring sting operation on him by an intrepid journalist, Mathew Samuel, who, posing as the chief liaison officer of a defence supplier, offered a bribe of `5 lakh to Bangaru. He paid `1 lakh in hand and promised to pay the balance in future for exerting personal influence on public servants in the defence ministry to deliver a non-existent deal. The actual cash delivery for the bogus deal was captured on the camera. The court held Bangaru guilty once he accepted cash to influence a public servant, even though he was to use no influence at all and there was to be no true deal at all. Whether Bangaru is legally wrong may still require scrutiny. But the sting operation had already proved his moral guilt, forced Bangaru to quit as the president of the BJP and virtually terminated his political life. But what about Q?
Now, compare Bangaru with Q. Q had secured in writing a hefty fee of $36 million from Bofors to deliver the Indian gun contract to Bofors by a stipulated date, which he successfully did. He got in hand some $7.2 million delivered into his bank account, with IOU for the balance millions. Bangaru got `1 lakh delivered in hand in cash, with a promise of `4 lakh in future. The amount paid and promised to Bangaru translates to just five days’ interest on the fee already received by Q and one day’s interest on his total bribe. Q is a dacoit by Bangaru’s standards and Bangaru a petty thief on Q’s scale. Yet Bangaru lost his political future, his bribe money as fine, with four years jail term. But, Q, the globe-trotting buccaneer, has been protected, defended and deified by prime ministers Chandrasekhar, Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, and also by Sonia Gandhi. But the petty offender Bangaru, with no one to defend or protect him, is disgraced worse than a prostitute. Yet the Congress shamelessly pontificates to the BJP to introspect on Bangaru. And the BJP is mysteriously silent on Sonia.
Source : Expressbuzz
|
By S. Gurumurthy
Sten Lindstrom, the former Swedish police officer who blew the whistle on the Bofors payoff, has again recalled the issue with his latest interview. Lindstrom has again named Ottavio Quattrocchi, the infamous Italian fixer, as the main player in the loot. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) lost no time to corner the ruling Congress in Parliament. The BJP charged that Q was saved because he was close to Rajiv Gandhi. But does it need a seer to tell the BJP that he was close to Rajiv only because he was closer to Sonia Gandhi, an Italian expatriate. The CBI has tons of evidence about the unusual affinity between Sonia’s family and Q’s family, like sharing weekends, annual holidays and one’s children staying at other’s home. Now, a quick recall of ‘Operation Save Q’ that wrecked the Bofors case over two decades.First, the Chandrasekhar government instructed its counsel to argue against the CBI to terminate the prosecution. But K Madhavan, the CBI official who headed the probe, rose up in the court, openly exposed the government, ruined the efforts to bury the case and resigned the job. Afterwards the wily Narasimha Rao struck a deal to allow Q to leave India in return for political truce for his government from 10 Janpath. Later, Madhav Singh Solanki, external affairs minister, unsuccessfully tried to forge a letter in India government’s name to the Swiss government asking the latter to junk the case. The United Front government in power between 1996-’98 too was just a Congress proxy. But as it could do nothing, Sonia pulled it down. She then claimed the support of 272 MPs and was desperate to become prime minister. But Mulayam Singh blew her claim off. Her inner voice that advised her not to become prime minister in 2004 was of course silent then.
A year earlier, in 1997, she stormed into the Congress headquarters and occupied the party president’s chair when the reigning President Sitaram Kesri had gone to the toilet to ease himself and was kept locked inside long enough to make the presidential changeover smooth. As Congress president, she first gave a clean chit to Q, even asked the NDA government for proof against him! Keen to avoid hostility with Sonia, who had become the Opposition Leader in 1998, the NDA too preferred to be soft on Q. Result, NDA’s relation with Sonia then was better than UPA’s relation with NDA now. Later, under the UPA regime, Q was allowed to withdraw his booty from Bofors that the CBI had got frozen in a UK bank. Still later, during the 2009 elections, Manmohan Singh lamented how Q was being hounded by red corner notice from the government for over a decade and how that was harming India’s image abroad. Predictably, after elections, the red corner notice was off. Finally the UPA closed the case against Q, saving Q from risk of arrest, custodial interrogation and prosecution. With the result the story of how he got the Rajiv government to do what he wanted done for Bofors, precisely by the schedule he wanted, remains untold by him till now.
The publicly known facts about Q’s role tell volumes. Q had promised Bofors in September 1985 that, if they agreed to a 3 per cent fee to him (equal to some $36 million, `180 cr now) he would deliver the contract in their favour from Rajiv’s government before March 31, 1986. Q would lose that fortune if the gun contract was delivered even a day later. And he did finally deliver them the contract seven days ahead of the agreed date! Rajiv Gandhi did sign the Bofors gun contract on March 24. Unless Q was controlling the signature on the contract for Bofors he could not have dared to guarantee delivery by March 31. That’s why Lindstrom had consistently said that Sonia ought to be interrogated as a suspect — yes, as a suspect — in the Bofors case. Yet, a desperate Congress has now clutched at Lindstrom’s statement that Rajiv did not benefit by the bribe, forgetting that he had also called Sonia as a suspect. The BJP in Parliament mysteriously left her out and highlighted only Q knowing that Q’s importance was because of Sonia. See what happened in the next 48 hours.
A day after BJP showed such unbelievable deference to Sonia came the news that Bangaru Laxman, the former BJP president, had been indicted for taking `1 lakh — yes just `1 lakh — as illegal gratification. In a daring sting operation on him by an intrepid journalist, Mathew Samuel, who, posing as the chief liaison officer of a defence supplier, offered a bribe of `5 lakh to Bangaru. He paid `1 lakh in hand and promised to pay the balance in future for exerting personal influence on public servants in the defence ministry to deliver a non-existent deal. The actual cash delivery for the bogus deal was captured on the camera. The court held Bangaru guilty once he accepted cash to influence a public servant, even though he was to use no influence at all and there was to be no true deal at all. Whether Bangaru is legally wrong may still require scrutiny. But the sting operation had already proved his moral guilt, forced Bangaru to quit as the president of the BJP and virtually terminated his political life. But what about Q?
Now, compare Bangaru with Q. Q had secured in writing a hefty fee of $36 million from Bofors to deliver the Indian gun contract to Bofors by a stipulated date, which he successfully did. He got in hand some $7.2 million delivered into his bank account, with IOU for the balance millions. Bangaru got `1 lakh delivered in hand in cash, with a promise of `4 lakh in future. The amount paid and promised to Bangaru translates to just five days’ interest on the fee already received by Q and one day’s interest on his total bribe. Q is a dacoit by Bangaru’s standards and Bangaru a petty thief on Q’s scale. Yet Bangaru lost his political future, his bribe money as fine, with four years jail term. But, Q, the globe-trotting buccaneer, has been protected, defended and deified by prime ministers Chandrasekhar, Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, and also by Sonia Gandhi. But the petty offender Bangaru, with no one to defend or protect him, is disgraced worse than a prostitute. Yet the Congress shamelessly pontificates to the BJP to introspect on Bangaru. And the BJP is mysteriously silent on Sonia.
Source : Expressbuzz
Post comment
Print Article
Send to friends
Save as PDF