Congress denies WikiLeaks report on Rajiv Gandhi

NEW DELHI: Congress has trashed reports that alleged Rajiv Gandhi may have been the main negotiator for a Swedish company which intended to sell fighter aircraft to India in mid 1970s. The news reports which appeared on Monday were based on an almost 40-year-old US embassy cable, which is part of the second tranche of documents with Wikileaks.

Claiming the allegations against Rajiv Gandhi were baseless, party general secretary Janardan Dwivedi referred to the last line of the cable — that it could not be confirmed whether Rajiv was negotiator — to emphasise that there was no foundation to the allegation and accused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of spreading falsehoods. “Having noted what the Swede has said, the cable makes the comment that there was no additional information to either refute or confirm the information. The foundation of the whole story falls flat here,” he said quoting the cable.

According to a national daily, the US cable alleged Rajiv Gandhi may have been a negotiator for Swedish company Saab-Scania, when it tried to sell its Viggen fighter aircraft to India in the 1970s. His mother Indira Gandhi was the prime minister then. The cable says the deal never happened because of American pressure on Sweden not to sell to India as the aircraft had several parts made by US companies.

The cable dated October 21, 1975, alleged: “Swedish embassy official has informed us that main negotiator with Swedes on Viggen at New Delhi end has been Mrs Gandhi’s elder son, Rajiv Gandhi. Latter’s only association with aircraft industry (to our knowledge) has been as pilot for Indian Airlines and this is first time we heard his name as an entrepreneur.”