Wednesday 25 April 2012

Bofors scandal: Big B finally deemed” innocent “after 25 yrs


Relief has come home to megastar Amitabh Bachchan 25 long years after the Bofors scandal hit the Indian shores. A Swedish whistleblower has owned up to being guilty of the charges and has also said that neither the then Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi and nor Amitabh Bachchan were involved in the case. In fact, according to reports, senior Bachchan was only being made a scapegoat due to his family relations with the Indian supremo. Now the truth has come out, and the Bachchan family seems to have heaved a huge sigh of relief.


"I speak from personal experience and personal exoneration. 25 years after the incident, I read today from one that pioneered accusation and investigation, of innocence. Of the fault that never lay before me. Of one that remained and shall perhaps remain a darkened spot, blemished beyond all recognition, but in admittance of wrong doing against me. No one shall be able to understand or even remotely fathom, the hours and days and months and years of the anguish of petulant blame that I had to go through," Amitabh wrote quite expressively on his blog late last night. The normally reserved Jaya Bachchan has also spoken out, “I’m happy that he has been acquitted. God is great.”

"I regret that my parents are not alive to see me given clean chit. It took 25 years to come clean the loss, taint and pain I had to bear is irreparable," he said.

"I don't know politics so I withdrew my papers but coincidentally the bofers matter surfaced and people assumed that I backed out.

"I was told that my name was planted by the investigating agencies as it was near in the list of accused," he said.

According to Wikipedia, the Bofors scandal was a major corruption scandal in India in the 1980s and 1990s; initiated by Congress politicians and implicating the prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi and several others who were accused of receiving kickbacks from Bofors AB for winning a bid to supply India's 155mm field howitzer. The scale of the corruption was far worse than any that India had seen before and directly led to the defeat of Gandhi's ruling Indian National Congress party in the November 1989 general elections.

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