Thursday, January 19 2006 12:04 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today (Jan 19,2006) charged the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government not only with 'defying public opinion and the norms of ethics and morality' in the Bofors case but also deciding to defy even the direction of the Supreme Court to maintain status quo ante in relation to Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi's two London accounts.

"The UPA Government has decided to defy the rule of the law. The Government has decided to defy public opinion, defy the norms of ethics and morality. The Government has now decided to defy even the direction of the Supreme Court", alleged party General Secretary Arun Jaitley at a press conference here.

He alleged that far from making any honest effort to trace out sources of Quattrocchi's funds and get the accounts refrozen, the CBI announced that it had no evidence against the Italian businessman to link their accounts to the Bofors money and Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced that 'the Supreme Court order is incapable of compliance'.

Referring to newspaper reports that the British authorities had defrozen the accounts following Indian requests, he said, "The e-mail from the Crown Prosecution Service establishes that it was told there was no evidence in the case against Quattrocchi."

"The 'Quattrochi friendly' opinion of Additional Solicitor General Kalyan Pathak was that there was virtually no case against Quattrochi. The opinion is fictional. What happened to the pending charge sheet against him?", Jaitley asked.

Alleging that the Government strategy was to have an acquittal of Quattrocchi without trial, he said, "A trial will be embarrassing. An acquittal of Quattrocchi will be a vindication of Sonia Gandhi."