No reprieve in sight from the 'Q' factor

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may accuse the Indian legal system of unnecessarily harassing Ottavaio Quattrochhi, who allegedly was one of the recipients of the kickbacks in the Bofors gun deal, the fact remains that the Italian middleman received help from friendly quarters at the Centre at almost every step.

Right from the time when the information about the kickbacks first surfaced way back in 1987, when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister, to the withdrawal of the Red Corner Notice sent out against him, Mr Quattrochhi managed to evade the Indian security agencies and the legal system. The fact that barring the periods 1989-90, when V P Singh was the country���s prime minister, and 1998-2004, when NDA was in power, friendly parties at the helm helped him no end to escape the dragnet.

The lifting of the Red Corner Notice was merely the final episode in CBI���s protracted endeavour to save Mr Quattrochhi. In the dying days of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, the Delhi High Court, in its order delivered in February 2004, quashed proceedings against the Hinduja brothers, the public servants allegedly involved in the scandal on the ground that they were no longer alive and other co-accused. There was no attempt to file an appeal in the Supreme Court.

The fact that the Congress-led UPA, in the interregnum come to power at the Centre, had fuelled the suspicion that CBI was determined to give Mr Quattrochhi a breather. The investigative agency had prepared a SLP against the High Court judgement, but was not allowed to file it on the directive of Union law minister H R Bhardwaj.

In December 2005, the UPA government sent its additional solicitor general B Dutta to London to apprise the British authorities about CBI���s failure to link unaccounted money stashed in local banks to the Bofors kickbacks, a move which led to the defreezing of the accounts.

The Italian middleman was caught twice in between, first by the Malaysian government in 2003, and later by the Argentine government in early 2007. India���s plea to extradite him was turned down by a Malaysian High Court on Friday. A revision petition was filed on Monday, but it had become too late by then as he had fled from Kuala Lumpur during the weekend.

The El Dorado court in Argentina, in its June 2007 order rejecting India���s plea to extradite Mr Quattrochhi, dropped enough hints to suggest that New Delhi lost the case because it did not get ���fresh arrest warrant��� issued against him immediately after the Delhi High Court���s February 2004 and May 2005 judgements, which quashed proceedings against the public servants and certain other accused persons.

���Whatever was done in the Bofors case was done when the non-Congress governments were in power,��� explained BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley.

Till 1990, when V P Singh was prime minister with the backing of the Left and BJP, there was no attempt to file an FIR in the case. ���In 1990, the FIR was registered, the accounts were frozen and the Letter of Rogatory sent,��� Mr Jaitley said.

Mr Quattrochhi was allowed to escape from the country in 1993, when P V Narasimha Rao was the prime minister. On October 22, 1999, when NDA was in power, CBI had filed a chargesheet against Mr Quattrochhi, framed charges against him and his wife Maria, Win Chadha and wife Kanta. It said the Italian middleman had been paid 3% of the deal as kickback, which translated to $7 million.