The Central Information Commission today directed the CBI to produce before it all the records related to Bofors case accused Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi which, according to the investigating agency, should be withheld from being made public.
A full bench of the CIC was of the view that all records related to the two-decade old case should be summoned but it was felt that since these records may run into tens of thousands of pages, only those, where disclosure was objected to by the CBI would be produced for perusal of the commission.
The bench, comprising chief information commissioner Satyananda Mishra and information commissioners Annapurna Dixit and Deepak Sandhu, said the commission after perusal of the documents would decide which of them can be made public.
The rest of the documents, where CBI has no objection from disclosure, would be provided to RTI applicant Ajay Agrawal, the bench of the transparency panel held.
The CBI had earlier sought adjournment of the proceedings as the official dealing with the RTI application was not present but this request was rejected by the panel which said notice was given well in advance and CIC was working hard to cut down on pendency.
In his RTI application, Agrawal had sought to get from the CBI documents related to the case against Quattrocchi, correspondence exchanged with British authorities on defreezing of his accounts, opinions of agency sleuths and law officers on his extradition among others.
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