Q-Eering The Pitch

Ten years ago, when the Bofors scandal first came to light, I was working for the Indian Express. Every morning that summer, during the editorial meeting, Arun Shourie would bring us up to speed on what was happening. By the end of that torrid summer, few of us had any doubts as to who had been the ultimate beneficiaries of the Bofors largesse.

But concrete proof that would stand judicial scrutiny was hard to come by and the Rajiv government hid behind that in the full knowledge that without its cooperation, such proof would never surface. With every passing day the trail became colder.

 

For most of 1987, The Indian Express fought a lonely battle, including an occasion when, during a strike engineered by the government, many of us were virtually imprisoned in the building for about 14 hours by a stone throwing, iron-rod wielding mob.

Then, suddenly, The Hindu joined the battle and very soon took charge of it. Throughout 1988, it published a flood of documents which were subsequently painstaking analysed by S Gurumurthy, the late Ram Nath Goenkas accountant and super-brain. In one such analysis, he strongly suggested that the trail could well lead to the very top.

And there was the mountain of circumstantial evidence as well, which if nothing else, at least made out a prima facie case of malfeasance in high places. It was so much that had someone filed a criminal case, the courts would have had no option but to take cognisance.

In the event, nothing happened. But in the general election of 1989, the people decided that legally sustainable proof or not, they were convinced that some very high and mighty people had accepted bribes. So they voted the Congress out of power.

Its successor didnt remain in power long enough to conclude the story and soon thereafter, in June 1991, the Congress was back in power minus Rajiv Gandhi, who had been brutally assassinated a month earlier by a LTTE terrorist.

For seven long years since 1990, the matter slowly wound its way through Swiss courts, which last month finally released the documents containing the names of the beneficiaries. Two of these names Win Chaddha, who was the official Bofors agent and Ottavio Quattrocchi, who is said to have been a close acquaintance of the Gandhi family have been released by the CBI.

Politically, Win Chaddha is irrelevant. In any case, as the agent, he was probably entitled to some sort of commission.

But the case of Mr Quattrocchi, who fled India last July, is altogether different. His locus standi in the Bofors deal could only have been through his presumed closeness to the Gandhi family.

Sonia Gandhi can hardly be pleased, on the eve of her daughters wedding, to hear the news that Mr Quattrocchi and his wife had been on the take in a scandal in which fingers were pointed at her late husband too.

From all accounts, theres nothing more she desires than to clear his name, which is perfectly legitimate. But it is beginning to look increasingly difficult. Even if the statements made by the generals and Rajivs former political colleagues are discounted, what is Sonia going to do about the pestilential Q?

Equally importantly, what is the Congress going to about her?