Mr Q and Minister B

The ministry of law and the gentleman presiding over it presumably exist in order to uphold the law of the land. But in the entire handling of the affairs involving Ottavio Quattrocchi, neither the ministry nor the minister appears to be unduly anxious to discharge their responsibilities. An Express investigation has just revealed how some crucial — and telling — governmental interventions allowed this fugitive from justice to walk free from Buenos Aires last month.

The Argentinian phase of the Quattrocchi story was, in fact, a near repeat of another chapter involving the Crown Prosecution in the UK in January 2006. If in the latest instance the law ministry, with the full approval of the minister, specifically observed that there was little to be gained from pursuing the case against Quattrocchi in Argentina’s Supreme Court; in the earlier case the additional solicitor flew to London and gave the government’s express consent to the de-freezing of two bank accounts held by the Italian. This repeated botching-up of matters involving Quattrocchi isn’t, to put it mildly, coincidence. It does no service either to the credibility of the Manmohan Singh government or to that of the Congress party and its president. As for the credibility of the CBI, that has long been rendered dead in the water as far as the Bofors investigations are concerned. The UPA government ties the CBI’s hands down and then lays the blame for the bungling at its doors.

Law Minister H.R. Bharadwaj should be held accountable for this indefensible management of a case that has come to define political corruption in India and resign, just as Madhavsinh Solanki had to leave his post as Union external affairs minister for having attempted to thwart the course of justice in the same case 15 years ago. Of course, even as we demand this resignation, we also know that Minister B will continue to remain in his post undisturbed, just as Mister Q will continue to remain impervious to India’s criminal justice system.