NEW DELHI, Sept 18: India’s main opposition party on Sunday called for an investigation into claims made in a new book that the former Soviet Union bribed senior figures of the Indira Gandhi government during the Cold War. Former KGB senior archivist Vasili Mitrokhin wrote in “The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World” that the spy agency had bought secrets from Indian cabinet ministers and paid them retainers.

“It seemed like the entire country was for sale,” Mitrokhin quotes then KGB general Olef Kalugnin as saying, describing India as a model for infiltration of a third world government.

Excerpts were published on the front pages of major Indian newspapers on Sunday. The claims were likely to embarrass the ruling coalition headed by the Congress party and supported by the Communist Party of India — the two alleged recipients of KGB largesse.—AFP