Eighteen years, one question

The facts are clear.nbsp;Repeated trials conducted by the Indian army did not find Bofors as a favoured gun.nbsp;The verdict changed in the last trial.nbsp;Two intervening events had happened.nbsp; First was the meeting between the Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and his Swedish counterpart.nbsp;The second was that a corporate entity called A.E. Services Limited, which surfaced on the scene on November 15, 1985 and entered into a contract with the Noble Industries assuring it that it would procure for it the order for the Bofors guns on or before March 31, 1986.nbsp; The government8217;s policy of no middlemen was violated.nbsp;It now started showing an uneasy haste.nbsp;Files moved over a dozen tables on a single day and the contract was awarded on March 24, 1986.nbsp; M/s A.E. Services got its commission in an account maintained with the Noudfweiz Bank, Zurich, which was later transferred to M/s Coalbar Investments Ltd and then to the Channel Islands.

A person who could swing decisions in India obviously controlled A.E. Services.nbsp;Investigations establish that the face behind the company was that of Ottavio Quattrochhi, whose proximity to the powers that be was evident.

What happened thereafter is a textbook example of how every institution in India was subverted.nbsp; Why then does Arun Singh blame only Rajiv Gandhi? Let us analyse the conduct of each institution.

The political government: Even though the truth was discovered in April 1987, the Congress government decided not to register a criminal case.nbsp; So investigations could not start and cooperation of the Swiss and Swedish authorities could not be obtained.nbsp;Till November 1989 no case of corruption was registered. V.P. Singh8217;s government was in power for 11 months. It registered an FIR, it sought international cooperation and it took all effective measures to procure evidence to establish the truth.nbsp;This government collapsed in November 1990.nbsp;From then onwards it was the Chandrashekhar government, supported by the Congress, the Congress government led by P.V. Narsimha Rao and the United Front government again supported by the Congress.nbsp;The case was not effectively pursued.nbsp;Madhav Singh Solanki, the external affairs minister in the Narasimha Rao government requested the Swiss authorities to issue an aide-memoir to refuse cooperation in the case.nbsp; It was only between 1998 and 2004 that the CBI was again given a free hand to procure all documents and file a charge sheet.nbsp; Two erroneous judgments of the Delhi High Court in 2004 and 2005 have been allowed to stand under the current government and not been appealed by the CBI.nbsp;Barring the two non-Congress governments headed by V.P. Singh and Atal Behari Vajpayee, the role of the political executive continuously was to prevent the truth from coming out.

The Parliament: A joint parliamentary committee headed by B. Shankranand was constituted.nbsp;This committee will always remain a black spot in Indian parliamentary history.nbsp;It covered up the truth by returning a finding to the effect that what was paid to foreign entities in various tax havens was not kickbacks but winding up charges paid in order to terminate their agency agreements that had since been prohibited because of the government8217;s executive decisions.

The Judiciary: The Delhi High Court has the distinction of having passed five erroneous judgments. On December 19, 1990 a single judge bench raised six prima facie illegalities committed by the court for issuing a letter rogatory for assistance in investigation. One of the objections was 8220;that the CBI is not a legally constituted force which can be entrusted with the investigation8221;.nbsp; The Supreme Court reversed the judgment and strictured it.nbsp; On September 2, 1992 a division bench of the Delhi High Court quashed the FIR and the letter rogatory issued in the case.nbsp; The Supreme Court again reversed the judgment.nbsp; On June 10, 2002 after the CBI had filed a charge sheet in the case, the Delhi High Court quashed the charge sheet on an incredible ground that clearance of the Central Vigilance Commission has not been obtained by the CBI.nbsp;The Supreme Court again reversed this judgment.nbsp; In 2004 a single judge of the Delhi High Court quashed the charges against the public servants while allowing prosecution to proceed against private accused.nbsp;Once the Prevention of Corruption Act was deleted from the case nothing had remained. The CBI wanted to file an appeal but the Manmohan Singh government did not permit it to do so. Finally on May 31, 2005 the high court quashed the case against the private accused not on merits but on the grounds that the allegations of bribery and kickbacks were not contained in documents, which were merely certified copies and not duly authenticated.nbsp;The CBI again did not appeal in the case.

The CBI: Questions relating to the independence of the CBI are reflected in the investigation in this case.nbsp;The CBI would actively investigate the case, obtain documents, file appeals against erroneous judgments only when a non-Congress government was in power.nbsp;Even after being informed by its counterparts in Switzerland that Quattrochhi was the recipient of kickbacks, his passport was not immediately confiscated and he was allowed to escape.

There is no pronouncement till date that the accused did not receive money. Quite to the contrary, the names of the recipients are clearly established. Their patrons are also known. They either absconded or got the benefit of the un-appealed judgments on technical considerations.nbsp;The media and the public opinion also suffered a fatigue over a period of 18 years.nbsp;People start losing faith in the investigative process and also in the capacity of the judicial process to punish the guilty.nbsp;The truth is known to all.nbsp;Arun Singh may have a grievance that his friend the prime minister was compromised.nbsp;But so were the Parliament and the CBI.nbsp;Regrettably even the courts did not come out unscathed.

The writer is an MP and former Union law minister