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The Q option

One month ago, it seemed that the fate of the Congress depended on what would happen in Bellary and Amethi. Sonia Gandhi may have won those battles, but she will find it tougher to surmount the challenge of two other places. Not rural backwaters this time, but two of the most sophisticated cities in Asia.

The two cities I refer to are Dubai and Kuala Lumpur. Win Chaddha is in Dubai and Ottavio Quattrocchi is in the Malaysian capital. Yes, Bofors is back in the headlines. Instead of debating the issues clearly and coherently, the Congress is back to its old tactics of yelling, staging walkouts, and generally trying to disrupt the working of Parliament. So what are the facts of the case?

The first fact is that there is clear proof that the Swedish armaments manufacturer Bofors paid money into bank accounts operated by Win Chaddha and Ottavio Quattrocchi. This is not an allegation; the Swiss authorities have turned over documents to their Indian counterparts stating precisely this.

The second fact is that Rajiv Gandhi, who was then the prime minister, took an unusual amount of interest while negotiations were on to decide which field gun the Indian Army should purchase. It should be noted that the late Congress prime minister seemed interested not just in the fact that Bofors won the deal, but that it did so as soon as possible. Why did he do so?

It has been suggested that the answer lies in the fine print of a contract between the Swedish manufacturer and Ottavio Quattrocchi. Is this why Rajiv Gandhi was in such a tearing hurry that he opted to ignore even Sarla Grewal (then principal secretary to the prime minister)?

But who was Quattrocchi to mediate a deal between the Government of India and a Swedish armaments manufacturer? Officially, he was nothing more than the representative in Delhi of the Italian fertiliser and chemicals manufacturer Snam Progetti. But his power in Delhi flowed from his connections to the Nehru-Gandhis. (The families were so close that the Mainos would stay with Quattrocchi when they visited Sonia -- Indira Gandhi refused to have foreigners in the prime minister's residence.)

Why hasn't any of this been probed? Why is it that twelve years after a Swedish radio station broke the news we still don't know why this mysterious Italian entered the picture? Some Congressmen have claimed that the very lack of evidence after all this time is ''proof'' that there is no evidence to be found.

Well, almost every ministry in this period was either a purely Congress government (Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao), or one that was supported from outside by the Congress (Chandrashekhar, Deve Gowda, Gujral).

It was only in January 1990, three years after the scandal broke, that the Central Bureau of Investigation bothered to file a First Information Report, or the Swiss authorities were asked to freeze certain accounts. Once the V P Singh government fell, it was back to business as usual.

Incidentally, has anyone noticed the circumstances under which Deve Gowda was toppled? In January-February 1997, the Indian government took steps to get Quattrocchi extradited from Malaysia and received a large chunk of documents from the Swiss. A few weeks later, Deve Gowda was out...

My point is that the Bofors investigation was never taken very seriously until now. For the first time there is a government in New Delhi that has an ample majority and doesn't depend on the Congress for support. Small wonder, then, that the Congress is worried. It isn't just the fact that Rajiv Gandhi has finally been named as one of the accused, there is also the fact that the Vajpayee ministry has successfully negotiated an extradition treaty with the United Arab Emirates -- where Win Chaddha happens to be. And how about Quattrocchi?

His choices are fairly bleak. The first option is that he stays on the run forever -- he can't return home since the European Union has taken a tough stance. The second is that he returns to India, tells the truth to the investigators, and faces the consequences (which needn't be too heavy if he helps). The third possibility is that he is extradited to India despite all his efforts, refuses to tell the truth, and is put under trial with all the consequences that follow.

The Congress, and more specifically its leader, must strive to keep Ottavio Quattrocchi away from Delhi at all costs. And the same goes for Win Chaddha. We haven't yet heard the last of Bofors.

T V R Shenoy