Bofors scam: I have lived with stigma for 25 years, Amitabh Bachchan says

PTI

Mumbai, 25 April 2012: Expressing happiness over his name being cleared in the 25-year-old Bofors case, megastar Amitabh Bachchan today said the clean chit has come "too late".

 

Addressing a press meet here after a former Swedish Police chief, the whistle-blower in the case, gave him a clean chit, the 69-year-old actor said he and his family had to suffer insult for no reason.

 

"I am happy that at least now I have been declared innocent. However it is sad it came out so late. I wish my parents were alive today to hear about my innocence," he said.

 

Bachchan felt this clean chit should have come 25 years back.

 

"I remember that when these allegations were levelled against me, my father had asked me if I had done anything wrong but I could not say anything that time. He was disturbed about the allegations. But today they are not with me to hear about this (clean chit)," he added.

 

In an interview to a website, former Swedish police chief Sten Lindstrom, who led the Bofors probe in his country, alleged Indian investigators probing the scandal had during a trip to Sweden in 1990 "planted the Bachchan angle." Quoting the Swedish police, Bachchan said, "The original list submitted by them (Swedish police) did not even include my name in the accused list. It was planted by Indian investigators when they went to Sweden to procure the list."

 

Asked to identify the person in India who wanted to defame him, Big B declined to take any names and said he only wanted to clear his name in the scandal.

 

The megastar said that the question of compensation does not arise as the investigating agencies cannot make up for the suffering his family underwent all these years.

 

Amitabh’s wife and Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan said she was happy that the truth has come out but wondered how "you erase those things" that were written about him then.

 

" ... but I want to know how to erase those things which were written about him then for which he resigned. How will you erase those things. This should serve as a lesson that nothing should be done in haste," the Rajya Sabha MP told reporters outside Parliament complex in the capital today.

 

She said they knew the truth 25 years back. "Justice takes its own time and God has his own time to reveal the truth."