India wanted Bofors reference dropped from Pranab Mukherjee interview: Swedish paper

New Delhi: India has registered a strong protest against a Swedish newspaper printing comments of President Pranab Mukherjee on the Bofors controversy during an interview.

Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter has reported that it was warned by the Indian envoy that President Mukherjee’s visit to Sweden was at ‘risk of being cancelled’ if the remarks were not retracted.

According to reports, the Indian ambassador to Stockholm, Banashri Bose Harrison, has said in a letter that President Mukherjee was not shown the ‘courtesy and respect’ that he deserves as a head of state.

The newspaper claims that it was asked to ‘retract sections of the interview mentioning Bofors’.

President Mukherjee is scheduled to travel to Sweden on Sunday. Ahead of his state visit, he was interviewed in Delhi and according to the daily he said that the Bofors deal should not be referred to as a scandal.

Read: Bofors scam charges 'yet to be proved' in court, says Pranab Mukherjee

"First of all - it is yet to be to be established that there was a scandal. No Indian court has established it," Pranab Mukherjee said in an interview to Swedish daily Dagens Nyhetter.

"I was the defence minister of the country long after Bofors, and all my generals certified that this is one of the best guns we are having. Till today, Indian army is using it. The so-called scandal, which you talk of, yes, in the media, it was there. There was a media trial. But I'm afraid, let us not be too much carried by publicity," the President said in the interview.

When asked whether he thought the Bofors case was just a media scandal, he said, "I do not know. I'm not describing it, you're putting that word. Don't put that word. What I am saying is that in media it was publicised. But up to now, no Indian court has given any decisive verdict about the alleged scandal."

Read: Bofors guns are good: Manohar Parrikar

The Bofors scandal broke in 1987 and several people, including former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, were accused of receiving kickbacks for the purchase of Bofors howitzer guns.

"The President became engaged and was upset when Bofors was mentioned during a question regarding how we can avoid corruption today. Of course we had to tell our readers about his reaction," says Peter Wolodarski, the paper's editor-in-chief.