India Wanted Bofors Reference Dropped From President Pranab Mukherjee"s Interview, Says Paper

New Delhi:  India has objected to a Swedish newspaper printing the comments of President Pranab Mukherjee on the Bofors scam. The Indian ambassador to Stockholm has said in a letter that the President was not shown the “courtesy and respect” that he deserves as head of state.

The newspaper Dagens Nyheter, in a report today, claims that before the article was published, the envoy asked it “to retract sections of the interview mentioning Bofors”. The paper says in a report today, “She also warned that the planned state visit was at risk of being cancelled.”

The President was meant to travel to Sweden on Sunday. Ahead of that, he was interviewed in Delhi and said the Bofors controversy should not be referred to as a scandal but a “media trial”.

“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.

“I find the Ambassador’s reaction regretful. It is surprising that someone representing the world’s largest democracies is trying to micromanage which questions we should ask a head of state, and which answers should be published,” he said on his paper’s website.