Bofors Gun Deal Case

The controversial move by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to remove Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi from the "most wanted" list has not only triggered a political furore but also led to legal action. An application has been moved in the Supreme Court challenging the CBI decision. Quattrocchi is an accused in the Bofors pay off scandal.

This allows the Italian wheeler-dealer, who enjoyed unrestricted access to the highest reaches of power in 1986 when the Rs.1,437 crore howitzer deal was struck, to travel abroad without fear of arrest or extradition. It is not as though evidence on his key role in the Bofors scandal is in short supply.

Withdrawal of Red Corner Notice
The urgent application filed by advocate Ajay Agrawal sought the direction of the apex court to stay the operation of any withdrawal of Red Corner notice against Quattrocchi who has not submitted himself to any Indian court in connection with the Bofors case.

Agrawal, who had earlier moved the apex court in January 2006 against the de-freezing of Quattrocchi's bank account in London, sought issuance of Red Corner notice again. Agrawal said Interpol should be informed immediately so that Quattrocchi could be nabbed and produced before an Indian court. Following a communication from the CBI, the Interpol has taken Quattrocchi's name off the Red Corner notice.

The CBI had approached Attorney General Milon K Banerji in 2008 for an opinion as to whether to continue with the Red Corner notice issued by Interpol against Quattrocchi as the notice has to be renewed every five years.

Missed Opportunity
The Attorney General cited the inability of the CBI to seek Quattrocchi's extradition on two occasions--first in Malaysia in 2003 and then in Argentina in 2007--and opined that the judgments in both the cases indicated that there was no good ground for extradition.

The warrant cannot remain in force forever. Therefore, the warrant of February 1997 would lose its validity, particularly in view CBI's successive failed attempts to get the accused extradited from Malaysia and recently from Argentina. Agrawal had filed the petition in March 2007 accusing the CBI and its director of consistently misleading the court over the extradition proceedings initiated against Quattrocchi. During a hearing on September 5, 2008, the advocate had alleged it was ex-facie clear that the CBI was helping Quattrocchi ever since the change of guard at the Centre after the general election in 2004 in the country and at every step the CBI was facilitating Quattrocchi so that he may go free from the Bofors investigation.

Wrong Approach
The CBI is supposed to be an investigating agency. But when it comes to probing the deeds of those close to the government, it tends to become more of an obliging agency. First, it gave a clean chit to Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar in the 1984 riots case. Now it has requested Interpol to withdraw the Red Corner Notice against Italian businessman Quattrocchi, who allegedly received over $7 million as kickbacks in the Bofors case.

The CBI should have automatically gone in appeal against the Delhi High Court judgment of 2004 which exonerated the accused in the Bofors matter, and left it to the judiciary at the highest level to be the arbiters in the delicate political case that rocked the political establishment in the late 1980s and 1990s. That way the CBI would have drawn no negative attention to itself.

The sudden request is baffling, but only to those who do not know that it had been trying to save Quattrocchi right since the UPA Government came to power in 2004. It allowed the arrest warrant against him to expire in 2004 and then again in 2005. Not only that, it let him take the money, which is strongly believed to be the kickback amount, back from his London bank accounts in 2006 and then goofed up — whether deliberately or otherwise — during his extradition trial in Argentina in 2007 and thus helped him to escape to Italy.

Efficiency and Reliability
The problem with the CBI appears to be more basic. As a matter of course it fails to adhere to basic norms of investigation and followup, and does so only when prompted in politically sensitive cases. It fails in its duty as a top-flight investigating arm of the police to follow leads, or to even pursue the ends of logic in a given case.

The Government has never been able to establish before independent — or even sympathetic — observers that it is committed to maintaining the integrity of some of India’s most vital and under-siege institutions. This pusillanimity means that people are losing trust in those; and that they will view the institution-breakers askance. The CBI has been a prime target; so much so, many in the public assume its moves have a political flavour, rendering its entire existence as an independent, statutory body moot. With suitable changes of the law and appropriate staffing, a body such as the Central Vigilance Commission, an independent constitutional body, could serve the purpose with greater efficiency and reliability.