The comments made by Arun Singh, a close personal friend of Rajiv Gandhi and the former minister of state for defence, that he requested the Rajiv Gandhi that it was the prime minister and the defence minister’s job to find out who took the money in the Bofors case says something: it is almost certain he asserted that somebody took the money.

He was not sure whether he could even give the benefit of doubt to Rajiv Gandhi.  If Rajiv Gandhi was absolutely bona fide in the matter he need not have expected the CBI, Parliament or the judiciary or for that matter the media to make investigations but it was incumbent upon him to find out in the first instance who took the money.  This is a question which every Indian should be asking himself.  Unfortunately the last 18 years have established that in a case of corruption the entire system including each constitutional authority could be subverted in order to avoid knowing the truth.

The facts are clear. Repeated trials conducted by the Indian army did not find Bofors as a favoured gun. The verdict changed in the last trial. Two intervening events had happened.  First was the meeting between the Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and his Swedish counterpart. 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.  The government’s policy of no middlemen was violated. It now started showing an uneasy haste. Files moved over a dozen tables on a single day and the contract was awarded on March 24, 1986.  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.

... contd.