'Q' ties put Cong in a bind?

Dhananjay Mahapatra / TNN / Jan 20, 2006, 02:00 IST

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CBI sleuths who probed the 'Q' angle in Bofors case are certain that burial of the case would spare many Cong leaders.

NEW DELHI: No one is sure whether Ottavio Quattrocchi could have been convicted on the basis of the evidence at hand. But CBI sleuths who probed the 'Q' angle in the Bofors case are certain that burial of the case would spare many Congress leaders the blushes in any trial of the fugitive Italian.
Any trial of Quattrocchi would have seen CBI citing the "revealing" statements of his personal staff about the links he had forged with important Congress leaders.
The statements of Q's staff recorded by CBI in 1997 make it amply clear that he and his wife Maria were very close to Congress leadership.
Quattrocchi also used to visit and telephonically talk to law minister H R Bharadwaj, who also held the same portfolio in the early-1990s.

One of the employees, cited as PW-30 (prosecution witness) by CBI in its case against Quattrocchi, stated that she used to connect Quattrocchi through telephone to top leaders.
After consulting Snamprogetti's office diary entries, she stated that among those frequently called by Q were Bharadwaj, Natwar Singh, Capt Satish Sharma, Buta Singh, Vasant Sathe, Naval Kishore Sharma, Gopi Arora and N K Sengupta.
However, she was categorical that Quattrocchi had never asked her to connect him to the PM's House, Rajiv Gandhi or Sonia Gandhi and the latter two never visited Q's office in Hansalaya building on KG Marg.

Corroboration about Q's close personal relations with those to whom he used to make calls come out from the statements of personal drivers of Q and his wife.
"Quattrocchi also used to visit other political leaders, ministers and public servants of secretary level very frequently.
Bharadwaj, minister for law and order (sic) at that time, and Capt Satish Sharma were very close to him," said one of Quattrocchi's two drivers. They have been cited as PW-31 and PW-32 in the Bofors case.
"As per my knowledge, he used to visit most of the ministers of the Congress, but I cannot say who else were very close to him," said the witness in his statement to CBI in 1997. Explaining Snamprogetti drivers' log book, he said,
"From 1988-89 till his departure from India on July 29, 1993, I had driven Quattrocchi to the following places �� 2, Krishna Menon Marg (Vasant Sathe); 8, Tees January Marg; 1, Tyag Raj Marg (Dinesh Singh); C-1/14, Humayun Road (N K Sengupta); 14, Tughlaq Road (H R Bharadwaj); 19, Teen Murti Marg (K P Unnikrishnan); 109, Satya Marg; 17, Canning Lane; 6, Kushak Road; C-1/8, Pandara Park (R Prabhu); 141, Golf Links (R K Dhawan); 2, Central Avenue, Maharani Bagh (Biju Patnaik) and Chhatarpur Farms."
Quattrocchi's driver, who drove him to an Indian airport for the last time on July 29, 1993, says, "Q used to throw parties at his residence very frequently. Natwar, Satish Sharma, R Prabhu, B B Singh and N K Sengupta were frequent visitors."
That he left in a hurry, as if tipped off, was evident from this statement: "He was not having any luggage except one briefcase and he told me that he was going for an urgent meeting.
Whenever Quattrocchi wanted the vehicle, he used to tell me in advance. But the day he left, he did not tell me in advance. Suddenly, he called me to his house for reaching him to the airport (sic)."

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