CBI wants to restart Bofors probe

NEW DELHI: The CBI will write to the government seeking a nod to restart investigations into the Bofors payoffs on a direction from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) which has been examining pending reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

BJD leader Bhartruhari Mahtab, who is heading a sub-committee examining the pending reports, on Thursday asked CBI director Alok Verma to put up the case regarding “systemic failure“ in the Bofors contract as well as charges of bribe taking that made the deal a political scandal in the late 1980s.

The case continues to have political significance as one of the accused was the late Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, who had close links with the Gandhi family . The corruption scandal was seen as a major factor in Congress's defeat in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections.


On Thursday , Mahtab and other members of the sub-committee like BJP MP Nishikant Dubey asked Verma whether the probe, stalled since 2005 after a high court order discharging businessmen Srichand, Gopichand and Prakashchand Hinduja and the Bofors company was not challenged, could be pursued afresh.

Defence secretary Sanjay Mitra, who also appeared before the sub-committee, is understood to have informed the panel that certain files relevant to CAG reports were missing. MPs expressed surprise as they said even if original documents were given to investigating agencies, photocopies should have been retained for the record.

The case is, however, not completely dead as it came up before the Supreme Court and the CBI informed the court in December 2016 that it had been refused permission to appeal the HC order by the then UPA government.

When the CBI director told the sub-committee that the agency would need directions from the government, Mahtab is understood to have pointed out that the agency could do its job and leave the decision to the Centre. Verma said he would get back the committee in two weeks.

Dubey is understood to have pointed out that if charges (relating to Babri masjid) could be revived against BJP leaders through a court process, the same could apply to Bofors where the case has lingered.

The case before the PAC relates to two CAG reports that go back to 1989 and the early 1990s. The audit was never completed as successive governments did not provide an action taken report and the PAC did not provide its final views as required before the reports are sent to Parliament. PAC members raised queries over audit paras relating to poor execution of the Bofors contract for howitzers, pointing out that though the guns did well in the Kargil war, their initial deployment was not satisfactory .