The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday trained its guns on the United Progressive Alliance government for failing to extradite Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, the main accused in the Bofors kickbacks case.The matter was raised by some BJP members in Parliament but nothing was heard in the din over the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley said, "I have only one advice for the Central Bureau of Investigation and its officers -- that any government does not last forever but the agency will continue. So it should work honestly."
BJP leader and former Union minister Arun Shourie said that the onus for the failure to extradite Quattrocchi lies on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh [Images], who is the minister looking after the affairs of the CBI.
It is shocking that CBI Director Vijay Shanker claimed that the agency was unaware of the government's decision to withdraw an appeal in the Argentinian court for Quattrocchi's extradition, Shourie said.
The Congress, however, sought to downplay the entire controversy, saying it had nothing to do with it.
"The Congress has nothing to with this. There is a procedure, there is a legal process. A judgement has come, the judgement has come in favour of somebody (and) that person has gone back according to the laws of a totally different country," party spokesman Abishek Manu Singhvi said.
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