Swedish Police has decided to reveal the evidences they have on the death of former Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was killed in Stockholm’s busiest street on February 28, 1986. The Swedish authorities is set to put all the information out in public on Wednesday.
“I am optimistic about being able to present what happened with the murder and who is responsible for it,” Chief Prosecutor Krister Petersson told Swedish public television in February. And now, after four months, the team is ready to reveal all the information.
The revelation could be problematic to Congress party as one of theories about Palme’s death is that- middleman involved in Bofors scam were behind the killing of the former Swedish Prime Minister.
Dr Jan Bondeson, the author of Blood on the Snow: The Killing of Olof Palme argued that the middleman involved in the 60 crore (at that time) scam probably killed Palme.
“It may well be that Palme found out that the Bofors company was corrupt the very day of the murder,” he said. “That gives the middlemen behind the Bofors deal a strong reason to murder him. But that’s something the police have always ignored,” Bondeson told the BBC.
The Bofors scandal had created quite the stir back in 1980s. The Swedish Bofors was surprisingly chosen over the French Sofma gun in spite of being inferior in impact and range to the French arms. Retired Army General Sundarji who had just taken over as Army chief weeks before the Bofors deal started gaining ground, had this to say about the reasons for choosing the Swedish gun over its French counterparts, “The fact is that irrespective of which weapon is chosen, if the intention is to cream a certain amount off the top for party purposes or whatever, it could be creamed off whichever weapon is chosen”.
Rajiv Gandhi was first accused of being at the centre of a huge kickbacks and bribery deal. Later he was even accused of protecting Ottavio Quattrocchi, the main accused in this case. Quattrocchi, an Italian middleman, was said to be close to Rajiv through his wife Sonia Gandhi. The Bofors scam has showed how Congress corruption culture spread from top to bottom even involving Prime Minister of India and his family.
Rs 60 crore scandal done back in the days when it still was a huge sum of money had been enough to make Congress lose. Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister as well as the Defense Minister (he had removed PV Narasimha Rao from the Defence Minister post to oversee the Bofors deal), had faced a lot of flak for his involvement in the first of its kind defence scam in the country. The Swedish radio on April 16, 1987 broke the news of Bofors having paid Indian politicians in order to land the deal, and the case is still ongoing. Congress suffered a heavy defeat in the ensuing polls and Rajiv’s image was tarnished forever.