New Delhi, 2nd Sept: The Supreme Court on Friday said it will begin the final hearing in the Rs 64 crore Bofors payoff case in the last week of October. Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra,  Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said hearing will begin the week of October 30. The petitioner, BJP leader and advocate Ajay Agrawal, had requested an early hearing in the case. He had challenged the Delhi High Court May 31, 2005 judgment quashing all charges against the Europe-based Hinduja brothers in the case.

The apex court had on October 18, 2005, admitted Agrawal’s petition which was filed after the CBI failed to approach the top court with the appeal within the 90-day deadline following the high court verdict. Recent media reports have suggested there was a financial quid pro quo for the Rs 1,437 crore Howitzer gun deal in 1986. The hearing assumes significance in the wake of a demand in Parliament by ruling BJP MPs for reopening of the probe into the Bofors kickback scandal after media reports quoting Swedish chief investigator Sten Lindstrom alleged there was bribery at the top levels.

Agarwal, who had contested the Rai Bareli Lok Sabha elections in 2014 against Congress President Sonia Gandhi, had said he will also draw the attention of the apex court to a letter he wrote to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) seeking an investigation into the trail of the kickback money under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002. In the July 28 letter to the ED, Agarwal had claimed that the alleged crimes were committed continuously until 2006, when two London accounts held by Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrochi, who was accused as being one of the middlemen in the deal, were unfrozen. The BJP leader had said he was writing a letter to the CBI asking it to file an affidavit about the facts and course of investigation in the case, as during the brief hearing on December 1, 2016, the agency had told the apex court that the authorities had not permitted it to file an appeal against the May 31, 2005 verdict. Agarwal said he will try to convince the apex court through his petition that the “High Court had quashed the charges against the accused persons on technical grounds and the order was totally perverse which is liable to be set aside.”

Justice R S Sodhi of the Delhi High Court, since retired, had on May 31, 2005 quashed all charges against the Hinduja brothers – Srichand, Gopichand and Prakashchand – and the Bofors company and castigated the CBI for its handling of the case saying it had cost the exchequer about Rs 250 crore.