To end what it had earlier called “a continuing embarrassment”, the Congress-led UPA government on Tuesday informed the Supreme Court that it had decided to withdraw all cases against Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, accused in the Bofors pay-off scandal.

Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium told a bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan: “The Central government has consented for withdrawal of the prosecution of Quattrocchi.” He even indicated that a closure report would be filed in the court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate on October 3 when the case comes up for hearing.

This move comes in the wake of the withdrawal of a 12-year-old Red Corner Notice by the CBI against Quattrocchi, first reported by The Indian Express.

To justify the RCN withdrawal, both the Law Ministry and the CBI had said they had gone by “advice from the highest legal quarters” — a reference to then Attorney General Milon Banerji who, in a four-page opinion in October 2008, had pointed out that the CBI did not challenge the February 2004 High Court order quashing all charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act in the Bofors case. And argued: “Since no Special Leave Petition was filed on this ground... the Red Corner Notice is invalid.”

What Banerji did not mention — and what was buried in confidential files accessed by The Indian Express — that it was Banerji himself who, barely two months after the Congress-led government came to power, overruled CBI investigators and directed the agency not to file the SLP against the High Court order.

... contd.