The involvement of Ottavio Quattrocchi as a middleman is no longer in doubt. The Swiss authorities have confirmed to the CBI that he was the beneficiary of an account in the name of AE Services where a large amount of commissions have been paid in the gun deal. It was AE Services which had swung the deal in favour of the Bofors guns. All earlier trials which had favoured the French gun SOFMA were reversed in the final trial after AE Services entered into a contract with the company that manufactured Bofors. The contract was a giveaway. It mentioned that AE Services would get its commissions only if Bofors got the deal before March 31, 1986. Conveniently the contract was awarded on March 24, 1986. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise that the close friend of the Gandhi family had assured Bofors that he would clinch the deal before March 31, 1986. He succeeded in doing that. He got the result of the earlier trials reversed. AE Services received the kickbacks. Quattrocchi was the beneficiary of the AE Services accounts.

The inculpatory circumstances do not end there. The very day that the CBI got a confirmation of Quattrocchi’s involvement, its officers asked the government of P.V. Narasimha Rao to impound his passport. This was not done and his escape from the country was enabled. Once out of the country, no effective steps were taken to extradite him from Malaysia. The CBI under successive Congress governments had a clear mandate — to lose the case.

It was only in 1999 that the investigations were substantially completed and the chargesheet filed against various accused. A legal battle was fought in Malaysia to extradite him. He escaped from Malaysia over a weekend when an appeal had to be filed on Monday against the high court order in Malaysia refusing to extradite him. The Indian Supreme Court expressed a strong disapproval of his conduct for not appearing in Indian courts. The only pending question was whether the money trail stopped at Quattrocchi or travelled further to his political masters.

There was a parallel move by the accused to get a judicial burial of the case. The Delhi High Court delivered five erroneous judgments in this regard. Three of them were challenged before the Supreme Court and reversed. The UPA government and its law officers advised the CBI not to challenge the last two judgments. The first judgment sought to quash the investigation, on several grounds including that the CBI was not a validly constituted agency. It was reversed by the Supreme Court. The second judgment quashed the First Information Report. It was also overturned by the Supreme Court. The third judgment held that the CBI could not have filed the chargesheet without sanction from the Central Vigilance Commission. The Supreme Court again reversed it. The fourth judgment quashed the framing of the charge against some accused on the ground that there is no more a Living Public Servant left in the case and the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act could not be attracted. The fifth judgment quashed charge framing against the Hindujas on the ground that the provisions of the IPC offences will no longer be attracted. The CBI under the UPA did not challenge the last two judgments. The chargesheet now remains only against Quattrocchi. Law officers of the UPA government have given opinions that the case is no longer maintainable.

Having conspired to get a judicial burial of the case, the UPA then attempted to exonerate Quattrocchi. When the Crown Prosecutor froze Quattrocchi’s accounts in London, the CBI and the UPA government’s law officers cooperated in having the accounts de-frozen. It was an enterprising news channel which broke this story.

The bitter truth has again confronted the UPA and its leadership. Quattrocchi was arrested on February 6, 2007 in Argentina. It is now incumbent upon the CBI and the external affairs ministry to bring him to India. He is an accused in a pending chargesheet. He is an absconder. On the principle of Dual Criminality, corruption is an offence both in India and Argentina. An extradition treaty merely facilitates an extradition. Its absence is not fatal to extradition. Abu Salem was extradited even when there was no extradition treaty with Portugal.

Why did the CBI and the UPA government hold back vital information from the country for seventeen days with regard to Quattrocchi’s arrest? It is obvious that the political executive did not want to face the embarrassment of this information being made public during the Punjab and Uttarakhand elections. Additionally, the UPA can’t afford to get Quattrocchi back to India. His arrival in India will raise questions of whether the kickbacks stopped with him or travelled further. The money trail may lead to those the UPA seeks to protect the most. The deliberate delay by the CBI is intended to put up a weak and time-barred defence before the competent authorities in Argentina to get Quattrocchi back. The CBI’s brief is to lose the case. The CBI’s loss will be a UPA victory. A CBI success will be political suicide for the UPA. Why did the CBI collude with the political executive in keeping Quattrocchi’s arrest a secret? What was the CBI’s motive in keeping Quattrocchi’s arrest a secret? The CBI’s explanation that delay was caused for want of proper translation from Spanish to English is an eyewash. Did the Indian Embassy in Argentina not inform the government of Quattrocchi’s arrest in a language other than Spanish? An investigative agency which can’t translate a document from Spanish to English within a day or two cannot be trusted as India’s premier investigative agency.

If this case is to be saved the CBI must act honestly and independently. It must not consult the UPA government’s law officers. It must appoint an independent lawyer to appear for it. The CBI must not score self goals. It must not sabotage its own investigation. It must support Ajay Aggarwal’s petition before the Supreme Court and persuade the Supreme Court to overrule the fourth and fifth erroneous judgment of the Delhi High Court.

The CBI, the Interpol and the ministry of external affairs must use the Interpol protocol for Quattrocchi’s extradition. History has provided the prime minister with an opportunity. To stick to his office he can sacrifice morality. Alternatively, he can risk his office and uphold both values and the law. For him it can be a defining moment. He must express his preference between his office and his image. We will all wait for an answer. He has an option of going down in history. Alternatively, history will dump him.

The writer is a Rajya Sabha MP and BJP general secretary