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Ex-PM V P Singh hated the Bachchans: Swamy

The former prime minister V P Singh hated the family of the film star Amithabh Bachchan, and that may be the reason his brother Ajitabh Bachchan had to face a Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) case. This is a sensational claim made by the former law minister and Janata Party president Subramanium Swamy. He added that Bachchan angle might have been added to the Bofors case through the media during Singh’s regime.

Swamy added that as the Union law minister he dropped the FERA case against Ajitabh Bachchan, as it was ‘a silly case without any legal ground’.

‘V P Singh hated Bachchans. That was the reason this FERA case was slapped against Ajitabh by the V P Singh government,’ he said. Swamy was the law minister in the Chandra Shekhar government.

Amitabh met Swamy in Mumbai to thank him after the FERA case against Ajitabh was dropped by the Chandra Shekhar government. ‘[Amitabh] was very courteous and expressed gratitude for dropping the FERA case,’ says Swamy. He added that the then prime minister Chandra Shekhar had forwarded Ajitabh’s petition to him and asked him to deal with it.

Swamy further added, ‘Had Amitabh approached me to look into the allegations against him in the Bofors case, I would have certainly looked into it and would have ended the matter then itself.’ He said, ‘The idea [of filing such cases] is to get one’s target or enemy arrested for interrogation and then sometime release the person on bail. Newspapers would do the rest of the job, turning a ramand into actual conviction. One’s enemy then becomes guilty without a trial.

The person may be acquitted after some years, but who is to remember that, or who is to compensate for the lost years?’

Reacting to the former Swedish police chief Sten Lindstrom’s statement on Bofors, Amitabh had last week said that those who planted his name in the Bofors scam should explain why they did that. He had said that he had decided to fight against these allegations legally after he found his father hurt due to these allegations.

Swamy said that he had instructed his ministry to ask the CBI to drop the case despite advice from the ministry officials that he would get bad name for it. ‘There was no legal basis for the case. The case was created just to harass Bachchans. Ajitabh was already an NRI. So, where was the case?

As an NRI, he was eligible to buy a house in Switzerland. There was no question of any FERA violation. It was such a lame case that it would have never stood in court.

When my officials advised me against dropping the case, I organised a press conference and explained everything to the world that why I was taking such a step. And everybody understood,’ says Swamy.
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