New Delhi:
In a sharp response to Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj's barbs in Parliament referencing the Bofors controversy, Rahul Gandhi said today: "For 30 years the BJP has lied about my father."
The Bofors scandal of the 1980s was based on allegation that Swedish defence manufacturer Bofors paid huge kickbacks to Rahul Gandhi's father and then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and others for the sale of an artillery gun to India. In 2004, a court in Delhi said there was no evidence that Rajiv Gandhi had accepted bribes. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991.
"The judicial system of India has cleared Rajiv Gandhi," the Congress vice president said today to questions on Sushma Swaraj alleging that kickbacks were paid to the Gandhis.
While rebutting the Congress' allegations that she had committed a crime by helping disgraced cricket tycoon Lalit Modi get urgent travel documents in Britain last year, Mrs Swaraj had said: "Since you like holidaying so much, next time you take a break, I suggest you read up on your family history, read all the kale karname (wrong deeds) and ask, 'momma, how much money did we make in the Quattrocchi case...?"
The BJP has always accused the Congress of letting Ottavio Quattrocchi, an alleged middleman for Bofors, get away without facing action.
Sushma Swaraj also raised another allegation against Rajiv Gandhi, that he let Warren Anderson, the chief of Union Carbide, leave India days after a deadly gas leak from the factory left thousands dead in Bhopal in 1984.