New Delhi, October 24: A city court Saturday deferred its order on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) plea to withdraw italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi’s name from the Bofors gun deal payoff case.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Kaveri Baweja deferred the order to Nov 6 on whether the CBI’s application under section 321 of the criminal procedure code (CrPC) should be accepted.
The CBI had Oct 3 moved an application before a court here to quash all charges against Quattrocchi in the two-decade-old Bofors pay-off case, saying the case cannot be kept pending forever as attempts to extradite him have failed in the past.
In a 1987 broadcast, a Swedish radio station alleged that nearly Rs.64 crore ($13 million) were paid in kickbacks to the Congress party and the Rajiv Gandhi government for the multi-billion dollar Bofors Howitzer deal. The scandal shook the nation and Rajiv Gandhi lost his two-thirds majority in parliament in the post-Bofors election two years later.
–Agencies