Bofors case must be treated as closed: Mani Shankar Aiyar

NEW DELHI: Congress MP Mani Shankar Aiyar says the Bofors case must be treated as closed and BJP should learn that truth cannot be unveiled by resorting to "character assassination and downright lies".

Describing the Bofors case as a sting operation and not a scam, he said the V P Singh government in 1990 and the successive A B Vajpayee governments failed to provide conclusive evidence in courts in the case while they incorporated a martyr's name in a chargesheet filed eighth years after Rajiv Gandhi's death.

"These are vultures who feed on carrion," Aiyar told.

Following are excerpts from his interview:

Q: What do you make of the resurfacing of the Bofors scam?

A: Bofors was not a scam but a sting operation. It was a conspiracy put together by businessmen who sought to take advantage of the joint decision by the Indian and the Swedish Prime Ministers to not allow any middlemen or commission agents in the Bofors transaction.

Q: Why are the diaries of then Bofors chief Martin Ardbo so crucial to the allegations made?

A: To build an entire case around the Ardbo's diaries as a section of the Indian press and V P Singh's cohorts did was the root cause of the total failure of the successive non-Congress governments to find any substantive evidence that would hold up in court.