And once again, the escapades of the son-in-law have come to haunt the Congress party. The BJP, quite deftly, in the run-up to the Gujarat Assembly elections, has opened a new front of attack against the Congress, targeting its weakest link, namely, Robert Vadra.

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New reports have surfaced indicating that Vadra, of the “mango people in banana republic” fame, is on the back foot as the BJP has questioned his links to an arms dealer, Sanjay Bhandari, who, in turn, is linked to a number of seamy defence deals.

Prominent among these sordid deals is the role that Bhandari allegedly played in clinching a deal for a Swiss aircraft manufacturer Pilatus. Bhandari reportedly helped Pilatus secure a jet-trainer deal at a time when the Indian PSU HAL was also in the running for the tender and had thrown its hat into the ring with the indigenous HTT-40. Apparently, then defence minister AK Anthony supported HAL’s bid, but it was Pilatus which swooped in on the deal. Why was this so?

The mystery, hopefully, will unfold soon. Meanwhile, one must apprise himself of the world that Bhandari inhabited. No stranger to controversy, Bhandari was a high-flying, five-star regular who liked to live the good life. According to ED sleuths, he managed to maintain a low profile despite having prolific connections within the Congress government.

Incredibly, his company OIS Advanced Technology Pvt Ltd managed to bag an enormous deal with Pilatus, despite having a paid-up capital of merely Rs 1 lakh. Bhandari operated from behind the curtains and would have continued operating in his shadow world, had it not been for an income tax department raid on hawala operators based out of Delhi. That is when the story hit the fan.

Probing the records of the Hawala operators, the tax men found an entry of Rs 116 crore and the trail of that tranche of funds led all the way back to Bhandari. Currently, the ED is looking deeply into the affairs of Bhandari and probing the records of his web of companies.

However, the links with Bhandari still hang fire over the Gandhi family. This is not the first time the Gandhi family finds itself in the crosshairs over a defence deal. India’s political history of the 80s and the 90s is incomplete without the mention of the Bofors scandal and the massive repercussions it had in store for the party.

However, one note of caution must be sounded here. After decades of probing the Bofors scam, the CBI has failed to hold even one high-profile person accountable for the scandal. More than Rs 200 crore on a cumulative basis has already been spent investigating the matter, and the matter seems stuck in a recursive loop.

The probe against Bhandari must be taken to its logical conclusion. People, irrespective of their political connections, must be made to explain their business association, if any, with Bhandari. What’s more, the Congress party should proactively come forward and explain why a Delhi-based travel agent forwarded two international travel tickets worth Rs 8 lakh, which mentioned Vadra as the passenger, to Bhandari.

This will only serve to erode Congress’s clout in India.