The Congress had put no pressure on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the Bofors gun payoff case, Priyanka Gandhi said on Tuesday as the party came under attack for Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi being dropped from the agency's wanted list.
"Congress has never put any pressure on CBI in the Bofors case," Priyanka, who is campaigning for her mother Congress president Sonia Gandhi, told reporters in Rae Bareli.
"What do these issues have to do with elections?" she asked as the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) hit out at the Congress for reducing the CBI to the "Congress Bureau of Investigation".
The 12-year Interpol Red Corner Notice, or lookout notice, against Quattrocchi was taken off from the wanted section of the agency's website reportedly on the legal advice of Attorney General Milon Banerjee in October last year. It is not known exactly when his name was withdrawn.
According to Banerjee, the investigating agency did not have any basis to keep Quattrocchi's name listed in the Interpol Red Corner Notice especially when it lost the case for his extradition from Argentina in February 2007.
The case against Quattrocchi, known to be close to late Rajiv Gandhi, who was prime minister in 1987 when the bribery scandal broke, and his wife Sonia, has taken tortuous twists and turns after he was named in a CBI chargesheet as the conduit for the Bofors kickbacks.
{{/usCountry}}The case against Quattrocchi, known to be close to late Rajiv Gandhi, who was prime minister in 1987 when the bribery scandal broke, and his wife Sonia, has taken tortuous twists and turns after he was named in a CBI chargesheet as the conduit for the Bofors kickbacks.
{{/usCountry}}But he has managed to evade interrogation.