A Delhi court deferred till April 17, pronouncement of its order on a plea of a lawyer objecting to Central Bureau of Investigations' move to withdraw the two-decade-old Bofors pay-off case against Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi.
Metropolitan Magistrate Sandeep Garg adjourned the matter after Additional Solicitor General P P Malhotra submitted that the original records, which were sent to the Supreme Court, have yet not been returned.
Advocate Ajay Agrawal, who had filed an application against CBI's move to withdraw the case on October 3, argued that the appeal filed by him in October 2005 in the matter was still pending before the apex court. He claimed that CBI had not filed the appeal against the Delhi High Court judgement discharging some accused in the case.
Meanwhile, the apex court on Tuesday asked Agrawal to withdraw his petition seeking directions to CBI to take action for stopping the defreezing of bank accounts of Quattrocchi in London. It, however, allowed him to file a fresh petition against 70-year-old Quattrocchi.
A Delhi court had on November 6, 2009,deferred the pronouncement of its order, saying that it did not have theoriginal documents as those have been sent to the Supreme Court.
Quattrocchi, the sole surviving accused in the case after the Delhi High Court quashed the charges on May 31, 2005 against other accused, has never appeared before any court in the country.
The CBI had failed on two occasions in its attempt to get Quattrocchi extradited--first from Malaysia in 2003 and then from Argentina in 2007. In November 2009, the agency had asked the Interpol to take Quattrocchi's name off the Red Corner notice list.
