K Srinivasan
IN 1986, India signed a contract with Swedish arms manufacturer AB Bofors for the supply of 410 155mm howitzers. In 1987, the Swedish Radio reported that Bofors had paid bribes to secure the deal, including payments to Indian politicians and defence officials. That was the beginning of Boforsgate. The irony is that the howitzer was the best in the business and India got it at an excellent price. In fact, the utility of the gun was later appreciated during the Kargil War.
For the Congress party, Bofors has been an albatross around its neck. Every time that you talk of corruption, you talk of Bofors. Opponents, especially the BJP, have lost no time in raking up the gun deal and the alleged sleaze associated with it. It’s an easy stick to beat Congress, with, although the case was closed more than a dozen years back, to be more precise in 2011.
Unending coverage
Perhaps the more prescient comment on the entire controversy was made by the late GiriLal Jain (at that time the Editor-inChief of the Times of India), who during a conversation said that the Rs 64-crore bribe does not even equal the annual turnover of a jeweller in Hong Kong. What he meant was that there was such a puny amount that it did not warrant the sort of brouhaha that it had generated. He reflected that it had more to do with the politics of the day than the howitzer, or the money made out of it.
His comment was reflective of the unending coverage of the controversy, not just by The Hindu (where Chitra Subramaniam was leading the Bofors investigations) but by a large number of newspapers, noticeably The Indian Express and The Telegraph, which joined the chorus.
Thank God, there was no social media then and no 24-hour news channels. That would have taken the Boforsgate investigation to another level. Nonetheless, it has to be said that the Bofors investigation has been the most exhaustive and elaborate media reportage in independent India. No other scandal has come anywhere near the coverage of the howitzers – not even 2G or the coalgate scam.
Accuracy, verification
Chitra Subramaniam’s memoir, Boforsgate: A Journalist’s Pursuit of Truth, is a rollercoaster ride of those days and how bit by bit, she put the story together pursuing leads and identifying three sources who helped to finally trace the entire journey and the full extent of the payoffs. It’s a story that tells you of the hours. You need to spend hours verifying, crosschecking and making sure that your material is accurate and verified – a far cry from the way instant journalism is practised today.
Perhaps the biggest grouse is that the boxes of documents received by the CBI were never opened by the agency. It was something which the CBI vociferously denies. Officers from that era have maintained that the chargesheet against Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi and the Hinduja Brothers was filed primarily based on those documents.
As Chitra says, ‘India’s leading investigative agency has acted as if the boxes containing the confidential documents from Switzerland have never been examined, while successive administrations have exploited the existence of these ‘closed’ boxes for political gain, disregarding the truth and the dignity of the nation….. …..given that Bofors and corruption have shaped political careers and influenced elections for the opposition, their reluctance to examine the documents raises numerous questions, the most pressing being: who benefits the most from the silence surrounding these documents?’
The case property
In fact, The Indian Express had a detailed piece on the issue: ‘’Another key member of the CBI probe team in the Bofors case was NR Wasan, Deputy Inspector General (DIG), who had handled the case for 15 years. He told The Indian Express that after the Director brought them, the boxes were carried to the chamber of the Additional Sessions Judge Ajit Bharihoke in the Tis Hazari Court, opened by the judge and then handed over to the CBI as case property.’’
And, by the way, the Bofors gun was used last week at the LoC to great effect.
