When Sten Lindstorm, the Swedish Police Investigator who probed the Bofors fraud in Sweden, said that 'Sonia must be questioned on the scam' and on her links with Q, he was obviously on sure grounds. Sonia's role in Bofors scam, as revealed by facts in the public domain for over a decade now, not denied by her, unfolds in three parts in the Bofors theatre and involves her in the scam as much as it implicates Q.

In Part I of the Bofors play, Sonia, as the closest friend of Q and Maria, was their "contact" person for Rajiv. Sonia never denied that Q's family was intimate to her. It is not to say that Q was not close to Rajiv, but, certainly, Q would never have mattered to Rajiv if Sonia was not the link.

It is this link that was, in the business sense, Q's "contact at the highest level" in India which AB Bofors sought him for. Q leveraged this "contact" credibly to guarantee to AB Bofors that he could win the gun contract for them by a certain date, March 31 - and also did it for them. In extended part I of the Bofors play, after the scam broke out, while Bofors got the contract and Q got the money, it was poor Rajiv who took all the flak for the bribery. He became the prime suspect, courtesy Sonia and Q. With Rajiv's demise many thought that the Bofors case would lose its political bite.

But that did not happen, why? Sonia's role in Part II of the Bofors scam that unfolds explains it. Bofors became a huge political issue in when Rajiv was ruling because he was determined to prevent probe into the truth of it.

The more determined he was, the bigger the issue became. When Chandrasekhar, and not Rajiv, was the Prime Minister in 1991 and the Additional Solicitor General KTS Tulsi told the Delhi High Court that there was nothing in the Bofors case that was seen as an effort by Rajiv himself to scuttle the probe! The CBI Investigator of Bofors scam, K Madhavan saved the case when stood up and told the Court that the counsel was telling lies to the court.

Of course Madhavan lost his job. If after the demise of Rajiv, the Bofors scam did not die, it is precisely for the efforts to scuttle the probe continued again during Narasimha Rao's time. Madhav Singh Solanki, the Foreign Minister then, went to Switzerland and handed over an unsigned, confidential note to the Swiss authorities processing the CBI demand for secret bank documents of the suspects including Q.

What did that note say? That the government of India did not want the Swiss to co-operate with the CBI and give the papers! The Swiss court obviously would not - and did not - act unsigned papers. But 'stop-the-probe-game' got exposed again and Solanki, made a scapegoat, lost his job.

The obvious question in any one's mind will be: with Rajiv no more, why did they not tell Q "hell with you"? They could not and would not because he would tell them the same thing! The government helped Q to escape out of India in July 1993 to save Sonia. The more the government attempted to save Q the more, like Rajiv, Sonia became suspect in public eyes.

For most of part II of the play Sonia, being not directly in politics, was acting behind the scene and she never defended or spoke of Q herself. Others did it for her. When after 1996, the BJP began inching towards power and Congress slipping from power, Sonia seized the position of the party President in what was virtually coup in the Congress party. Later, she became the opposition leader too. That was when she had openly to defend Q by telling blatant lies. The same theme continued: Sonia had to protect Q at all costs. Otherwise what would be the consequence was self-evident.

Then began unfolding Part III of the Bofors play, with the Italian-born Sonia rising to the highest position that India could offer under, and even outside, the nation's Constitution. The elections to Parliament in 2004 brought the Congress and its post election allies to power. By opting not to become the Prime Minister, Sonia secured a unique position public life with unbelievable combination of moral and political power - with a subservient government to do protect Q, but, with her moral stature as a saint in tact.

But like in the case of Rajiv, for whom the title of Mr Clean became a fatal risk, the label of Saint for Sonia is becoming equally as risky for her. Every one knows what Q means to Sonia, without her saying a word. That what why the Additional Solicitor General of India was sent to London in December 2005 to tell the British police that there was no evidence to link Q with the funds in two bank accounts in London, which the NDA government had had frozen in the year 2003, and thus released Q's millions back to him. It needs no seer to say that for Sonia's protection Q has to be protected.

This theme is the common thread of the Bofors theatre. The way the government handled the Q detention issue this month too is the continuation of the 'protect Q to protect Sonia' syndrome. Q, unprotected and undefended is a fatal risk to Sonia and this government. Are the Congress and Sonia now getting placed where the party and Rajiv were in when the Bofors tornado hit them?

Courtesy: www.newindpress.com, February 28, 2007