Hinduja brothers appear before CBI

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JAN. 29. All the three Hinduja brothers, accused in the Rs. 64 crore Bofors pay-offs case, appeared together before the CBI for the first time today. They were questioned pinpointedly on certain aspects related to the track of payment received by them from the Swedish armaments firm, AB.Bofors, for helping it to clinch the Rs. 1437 crore gun deal from the Indian Government in March 1986.

For the time being, the CBI appears to have rounded off the interrogation of the three Hinduja brothers who were chargesheeted in the Bofors payoffs case in October last. The agency has to submit the progress report on their interrogation before the Special Court tomorrow. The three brothers had appeared before the Court on January 19 and have been questioned separately since then by the CBI officials.

Today's interrogation of the three Hinduja brothers lasted for nearly three hours at the agency's headquarters. Emerging from the CBI headquarters, the Hinduja brothers said: ``We answered whatever the investigators asked us.''

Well-placed sources in the CBI said that the three brothers were asked to clarify certain `aspects' of the payment track that had led the agency to their Swiss bank accounts, Vienna and again to certain Swiss banks. As the CBI is still awaiting response from several countries on the letter rogatories sent by it to track down the payment, the agency could not go beyond a point in its interrogation of the three brothers.

Sources said that payment of nearly 81 Swedish kroners in three coded accounts of `Lotus', `Tulip' and `Mont Blanc' had been traced to Swiss Bank accounts and certain amount to Vienna but the agency seems to have lost the track further down. The focus of questioning of the three brothers was to know about the outflow of funds received by them, sources said but refused to divulge further details.

The Hindujas had come down from their earlier stand of stating that they had nothing to do with the Bofors gun deal to maintaining that the funds received by them were not connected with the Howitzer deal with the Indian Government. Precisely, the CBI also wanted to know for which deal they had received the funds, sources said. ``That is why, the three brothers were quizzed on several aspects of the payment and its track and frequent transfers in banks to several countries,'' CBI sources said.

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