What a sad irony that, within a couple of years after this stirring speech, Rajiv found himself at the centre of a controversy that quickly snowballed into independent India’s most explosive corruption scandal. More disturbingly, it soon became known that the leader who had lambasted power brokers in his party had somehow allowed a power broker, a foreigner at that, to operate with the patronage of his official residence. That power broker was Ottavio Quattrocchi, a Delhi-based Italian businessman, who, thanks to his close association with the Prime Minister’s Italian wife, enjoyed privileged access to the most important address in the capital. This in-house Italian connection proved extremely costly for Rajiv. It embroiled him in the Bofors corruption scandal. The people of India who had given Rajiv’s Congress more that 400 MPs in the 1984 parliamentary elections, dethroned him by defeating his party in 1989.

It is a law of history that those who espouse high ideals are made to pay a higher price when what they practice violates what they preach. This is what happened to Rajiv Gandhi. But so strong is the influence that the Italian power broker has continued to wield at the highest level in the Congress party that 22 years after the Bofors scandal broke out, he still gets the party and its government to do his bidding. It is impossible to draw any other conclusion from the shocking disclosures, made in the investigative reports published in this newspaper last week.

The Congress leadership first assisted Quattrocchi to flee India in 1993, just a couple of days before he was required to appear before the Supreme Court. He later stated that he was not coming to India to face trial because “I have no faith in India’s justice system”. The person who made this arrogant and disparaging remark was publicly defended by Sonia Gandhi, who said in 1999, “The CBI has said he is a suspect. But we have never seen the papers naming him in the deal. They should show the papers establishing that he is guilty.” She had conveniently forgotten that four courts (three in India and one in Switzerland) had already established Quattorocchi’s involvement in the Bofors scandal.

... contd.