It is posthumous vindication, and the late Rajiv Gandhi's family is understandably keen to emphasise the point. | |
| The facts that the court has pointed to are also undeniable: there is no evidence, after nearly 17 years of the scandal surfacing, to show that Rajiv Gandhi took any money from Bofors. |
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| It is too late to argue that this might be because of the CBI's incompetence or of political skulduggery. |
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| So the time has come to bring down the curtain on a specific allegation against a specific individual, because such circumstantial evidence as existed in the case has been shown to be incomplete and unconvincing. |
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| In a way, this should be a relief for everyone because a prime minister exposed with his hand in the till would have been a slur on the whole country. |
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| Yet, there is an element of the Hutton report here: the specific allegation has been shown to be unproven and untrue, in the same way that George Fernandes has been given a clean chit. |
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| But the larger issue remains. Bofors did pay large sums of money to its agents. Where that money has gone is not yet known, because the accounts are still being chased. |
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| It is common knowledge that defence deals usually involve under-hand payments; the Tehelka episode made that crystal clear to any doubters. |
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| Is it unreasonable to suppose that the money paid out by Bofors did not reach at least some of the people involved in the decision to buy the howitzers? So, while Rajiv Gandhi's name is in the clear, the CBI's is not. |
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| Because the CBI has consistently failed to successfully close a whole slew of cases involving politicians in one scandal after another: the Jain hawala tapes, the sundry cases involving Narasimha Rao... Is it that all our politicians are pure as driven snow, or is it that the criminal investigation system is not up to the job of catching them? |
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| One solution would be to place the CBI and perhaps all criminal investigation departments under magistrates, as is the French system, and not under the executive. |
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| This would give them the independence that we have got accustomed to in such protected institutions as the Election Commission. |
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| Even regarding Rajiv Gandhi, some questions remain. Accepting that he was innocent of bribe- taking, what responsibility does he bear for the fact that one of his closest family friends was among those who received money from Bofors? |
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| Again, accepting that he was innocent, why did he order the return of Bofors executives who were on their way to India to tell all, about names and amounts? |
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| Why did he take steps that looked so much like a cover-up? Accepting that he was innocent, he seems to have been innocent of common sense as well. |
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