The just-released new book, "Unknown Facets of Rajiv Gandhi, Jyoti Basu and Indrajit Gupta", that was written by former CBI director Dr A P Mukherjee, has claimed that Rajiv Gandhi, as Prime Minister, wanted commissions given by defence suppliers to be pooled and used to fund the "inescapable expenses of the party".The book, as claimed by the author, is based on his conversations with Rajiv in June 1989.
Rajiv Gandhi,who was caught in the thick of the Bofors guns bribery scandal at that time and lost power later that year, was quoted by the former CBI director Dr A P Mukherjee as,"Rajiv Gandhi was very clear that commissions paid as a routine by most defence dealers should be properly accounted for and not siphoned off by dishonest officials of the armed forces and politicians...he wanted such payments to be pooled and accounted for," .
He further said that,Rajiv had come to know that some senior officers of the armed forces had been surreptitiously collecting huge amounts of money as "commissions" in most defence purchases, quite often in connivance with some ministers, middlemen and civilian officers as well.
Mukherjee says that he was additional director of CBI when he had this detailed conversation with Rajiv. The conversation had been precisely recollected by him in the book thanks to the diaries he maintained through his career.
Mukherjee, who was also advisor to home minister Indrajit Gupta and served a brief stint as governor of Mizoram, has mentioned that for years he was reluctant to make this episode public, as that would have amounted to betraying the former prime minister's trust, and that is something he could never think of doing.
He ended up saying that,"However, at this distant time and that too long after his tragic death, I owe it to posterity to narrate the full and complete disclosure of all that transpired between the two of us during this memorable coffee meeting with this remarkable human being whose trust I was privileged to receive in ample measure."
INDIA HONEST wonders, if few excrpts from the diaries of an former additional director of CBI,can revel such a dark facet of the Congress in the past, what will be the true colour of the unfolding picture, if the international whistle blower "Snowden" gets an opportunity to open his mouth on India,at least only for the last one decade UPA rule much celebrated for record corruption scams ?