India's biggest corruption scam in the 80's and 90's

The National Democratic Alliance government made all efforts to bring the alleged Bofors scam responsible to the book, but the successive Congress governments led Bofor Case Closure. The case was taken to its logical conclusion and the Central Bureau of Investigation, which was probing it, acted independently of the government during the NDA regime from 1998 to 2004.

The Bofors scandal was a major corruption scandal in India in the 1980s and 90s. The top politician including the former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi were accused for taking bribery from Bofors a Swedish company for winning a bid to supply India's 155 mm field howitzer. This Swedish company had paid 64cr to the top politician and higher defence officials. This scandal was brought to the limelight by journalist Chitra Subramaniam of The Hindu newspaper in india and by a Swedish radio Sweden.

The revelation written by Chitra Subramaniam is that the then Managing Director of Bofors, Martin Ardbo had-notwithstanding assertions to the contrary-lived and worked in India in the run-up to the finalisation of the deal for the howitzer in 1986. As Sten Lindstrom, the former head of the Swedish police has pointed out, Ardbo's diaries and notes were the most explosive documents' to come out of the Bofors trove. Because it was through them that the political part of the payouts was established. There were payments done to many agents and middle men but the payments done to Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, a close friend of the Gandhi family, was unique. In the bofors case closure Indians were the principal victims of the scam, to insist that there can be no closure without a renewed investigation. Many trails and investigation went on regarding the case in it, it revealed many big named politicians like Rajiv Gandhi, S.K Bhatnagar and many more. The Bofor guns inspite of the prevalent scam were used in d kargil war.

When the Rajya Sabha met for the day, BJP and AIADMK members displayed copies of a newspaper interview given by former Swedish police chief Sten Lindstrom where he said Rajiv Gandhi did nothing to prevent the cover-up to protect Quattrocchi, who is alleged to have received pay-offs in the deal. RSS alleged that in India cases against politicians are never pursued to their logical conclusion. While the Bofor Case Closure it was also asked why the Indian investigating teams which went to Sweden did not meet their Swedish counterparts probing the matter.