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Take note of fresh reports on Bofors: PM
Tribune News Service

Senior lawyer and independent candidate from Lucknow against Vajpayee Ramjethmalani answers newsmen on latest development in the Bofors issue at his residence in the Capital on Thursday. — Tribune photo by Mukesh Aggarwal

New Delhi, April 8
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee today said the CBI should take into account the “new light” thrown by press reports on the Bofors pay-off case. He was reacting to a question on the news report about observations made by Swedish investigator Sten Lindstorm, involved in the investigation of the Bofors case, who had stated that Congress president Sonia Gandhi should be questioned in the Bofors pay-off case.

Meanwhile, the BJP demanded that Congress president Sonia Gandhi should reveal the “truth” if she was aspiring for prime ministership.

“If Mrs Gandhi is aspiring for the high political office in India, is she willing to break her silence and share with the country the facts that she knows about this case? This is not a matter of legal compulsion but political propriety,” BJP spokesperson and Law Minister Arun Jaitley told newspersons here in the wake of an English daily carrying reports of a Swedish investigator in the Bofors case raising questions about Sonia Gandhi and Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi.

Referring to the news report, Mr Jaitley posed eight questions to the Leader of Opposition asking her primarily about how Quattrocchi was confident and later at the last minute was able to swing the gun deal towards Bofors company and how close was his family relationship with Sonia Gandhi.

“While the legal battle will be fought by the CBI, on the political plane it is her moral responsibility to make known the information she has about the case. If she maintains silence, then she will be rendered a moral suspect,” he said.

Asked what could happen if Sonia refused to reply to the questions posed by the BJP, Mr Jaitley said “the president of a national political party certainly has to come clean. I am concerned with the political ethics and what concerns public opinion.”

To a question as to how Sonia Gandhi was involved in the entire Bofors matter, he said questions like the “sudden involvement” of Quattrocchi’s firm AE Services though his earlier firm Snam Progetti was not involved in defence deals, his coming into India, his “escape from India with the connivance of the then government”, his confidence that he would be able to “swing the contract” towards the (Bofors’ parent company) Nobel Industries, had to be answered by her.

He hoped that the CBI would take note of the report and do whatever was permissible under the Indian law.