By IANS,
New Delhi : The Congress Friday said the court’s acceptance of the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) closure report in the over two decade old Bofors gun purchase scandal should be the end of the matter.
“The case has been through several levels of judicial adjudication but when a report has to be filed for closure, it has to go to a magistrate and the magistrate has to apply his mind and finally come to a conclusion. If the magistrate has accepted the closure report, that should be end of the matter,” said Water Resources and Minority Affairs Minister and senior party leader Salman Khursheed.
So much has happened, so much time has passed and so many adjuratory authorities have looked in the matter that it is not a decision that have happened just here in India but decisions that have taken place in other countries also, he said.
“I think you shouldn’t really be flogging a dead horse. Magistrate has applied his mind independently and legal system very clearly is based on the judgment of the magistrate, case begins or ends with the magistrate, and his words should be final,” Khursheed said.
On the investigation done by the CBI, Khursheed said: “If somebody is not happy, they always see these things and no investigation makes everybody happy. If a person has ulterior reasons and a rational reasons for seeking an investigation and if it comes to a conclusion adverse to the expectation, then they will raise these question and it is not fair… then they should trust the system and if our system has come to a transparent judgment we should respect it.”
A Delhi court Friday accepted the closure report filed by the CBI in the Rs.640 million Bofors kickbacks case that had rocked the nation in the late eighties and led to the fall of the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1989. The investigative agency was seeking to close all criminal cases against Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, one of the alleged recipients of kickbacks in the controversial howitzer deal for the Indian army