Amitabh dragged into Bofors scandal without evidence: Scribe

New Delhi : Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan was sought to be implicated in the Bofors scandal by a planted story linking his name to a secret Swiss account for kickbacks from the Swedish arms giant as part of a “vicious campaign”, says journalist Chitra Subramaniam.

“No, there was absolutely no shred of evidence that he (Amitabh Bachchan) had taken any money. But the water had been muddied so much that by the time the water could be cleaned up, the damage had been done,” Subramaniam told IANS in an interview.

“And you know how it is like, imagine the name of the Bachchans, I mean it’s a big name...”

Subramaniam, who has detailed how she faced pressure to find any proof of the involvement of the Bachchans -- the Big B and his brother Ajitabh -- after their names cropped up in the scandal, in her recently released “Boforsgate: A Journalist’s Pursuit of Truth”, accused a section of the then government and media of trying to implicate the Bollywood megastar, who was then a member of Lok Sabha from Allahabad.

“And you say the sixth account...there was no sixth account. It didn’t exist... it was planted by the Indian government officials,” she said, and called out the media and some then officials from top legal authorities of a “habit of speaking around loosely”.

“You don’t speak loosely as a journalist... if you are a journalist of stature or an official of stature, you don’t speak loosely, throwing names here and there. You know the office of the Solicitor General of India, or the CBI (the Central Bureau of Investigation) meeting the office of the Swiss authorities, you don’t speak around loosely. Every word is precious, whatever you say, you must be careful...,” she added. In her book, Subramaniam notes that an Indian delegation, comprising several top officials, had, at a meeting with a Bofors delegation, mentioned the names of the Bachchans and some Italian relatives of the Prime Minister.

She also recounts how she had travelled with an official Indian delegation to Switzerland in 1990 and after a meeting with Swiss officials, one team member took her aside and told her how there was a “sixth account” which could not be blocked as it was connected with the account of someone whose name did not figure in the FIR. According to this team member, the Swiss were given a list of names, including the Bachchans, and had allegedly indicated it was them. She posited that the bid to draw in the Bachchans was due to the fact they were close to the Gandhi family.

Subramaniam notes she made 18 phone calls to her sources “Snowman” in Switzerland and “Sting” in Sweden, seeking confirmation but drew a blank, with both sources telling her that she needed a break.