"As per the present CBI records, Rajiv Gandhi had not got a penny till India received last but not the final set of documents from Switzerland relating to the beneficiaries," Singh said. He said Gandhi's name did not figure in the five Swiss bank accounts into which the Swedish gun company had paid the kickbacks and the sixth and final set of documents is yet to arrive.

Singh, who was moved out of the agency after an 11-month stint in June 1997, said Gandhi's name figures in column two of the chargesheet for "his cumulative actions of omission and commission" as "the then prime minister and defence minister the entire file went up to him.Can you have a Hamlet without the prince of Denmark?"

Contending that the CBI had done what it had to do in investigating the case, he appealed to Prime Minister A B Vajpayee to press the Swiss Government to transfer the final documents as otherwise "the case will not see the light of the day and will not be resolved in the next ten to 20 years".

"In all fairness the CBI has done what it had to do. I believe the Swiss courts too have turned down appeals against transfer of vital bank documents to India. Now those appellants are making appeals at the political level. The PM should take up the matter with his counterpart at the political level", Singh said. He maintained that besides chargesheeting former defence secretary S K Bhatnagar, the prosecution should have also chargesheeted another official in the then PMO.

However, he declined to name the official saying he had sought Government's permission to prosecute him but the sanction had not been given. "People involved can use their influence," hesaid declining to elaborate. Referring to the investigations into the gun deal, he said the CBI had sought permission from the then Lok Sabha speaker P A Sangma to have access to the report of the joint parliamentary committee (JPC) on Bofors. This, he said, the CBI felt necessary as the conclusions of the JPC were entirely different from that of the investigating agency. "But the speaker in his own wisdom turned down the formal request," he stated.

After the Swedish radio reported the alleged kickbacks, the former CBI chief said, the then army chief Gen K Sundarji was "furious" as he felt that senior Army officials who had processed the gun might have taken kickbacks."It was on his insistence that an inquiry into the kickbacks was finally ordered. Then minister of state for defence Arun Singh supported Gen Sundarji's views and wrote a note to Gandhi in 1987 saying that the bribery angle should be probed," Singh said.

He said the CBI did not probe the quality of the gun as it was beyond its brief.