FILE photo: President Pranab Mukherjee (Agence France-Presse)
India has objected to a Swedish newspaper headlining the comments of President Pranab Mukherjee on the Bofors controversy, centred on whether politicians took kickbacks in exchange for buying artillery guns made in Sweden in the 80s.
The Indian Ambassador to Sweden, Banashri Bose Harrison, has said in a letter to the newspaper that it is guilty of publishing off-the-record information. On the Bofors comments, she says, "You had told me that Bofors is not of interest to your readers" and that the newspaper has focused on unimportant issues "in a patronizing and flippant manner."
The newspaper Dagens Nyheter, in a
report today, claims that before the article was published, the envoy asked it "to retract sections of the interview mentioning Bofors". The paper says in a report today, "She also warned that the planned state visit was at risk of being cancelled."
The President is meant to travel to Sweden on Sunday. Ahead of that, he was interviewed in Delhi and said the Bofors deal which saw India buying artillery guns from the Swedish defence manufacturer, should not be referred to as a scandal.
"No Indian court has given a verdict on it, the process of trial is going on, and unless some authoritative institutions describe it as a scandal and punish it, how could you say that it is a scandal?" he says in the interview.
"I find the Ambassador's reaction regretful. It is surprising that someone representing the world's largest democracies is trying to micromanage which questions we should ask a head of state, and which answers should be published," said Peter Wolodarski, the paper's editor-in-chief.
Allegations that then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was among the politicians who were bribed by Bofors for the Rs 1,500-crore deal cost the leader the national election in 1989. In 2004, the Delhi High Court said there was no evidence of the involvement of Mr Gandhi, who had been assassinated in 1991.