(AFP) - An Italian businessman fighting extradition to India over a 1986 bribery case involving Sweden's Bofors arms firm lost the first round in the Kuala Lumpur High Court today.

Judge Abdul Aziz Mohamad refused to accept as evidence an affidavit filed by defence lawyers for Ottavio Quattrocchi, who alleges the extradition attempt is politically motivated.

The affidavit was by journalist Prem Shankar Jha, formerly information adviser to then Indian Prime Minister V P Singh in 1990.

Quattrocchi, who was arrested and bailed here last December, says he fell foul of an Indian political vendetta and his only crime was to have been a close friend of India's former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and his widow Sonia.

Counsel for the Indian government, Cyrus Das, who had urged the judge to exclude the affidavit as it was based on hearsay, hailed the ruling.

Earlier, defence lawyer Cecil Abraham told the court the Home Affairs minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was wrong in ordering the extradition.

No charges in India

Abraham said no charges has been framed against Quattrocchi in Indian courts but the Indian government considered him a fugitive criminal wanted for trial.

Abraham said Quattrocchi resided in India up to 1993 while the first police report made against him was in 1990.

"They had three years to interview him, arrest him. They did nothing of that. How can you say he is a fugitive and that he fled the country," he said.

The hearing was adjourned until Wednesday.

India's Central Bureau of Investigations has levelled charges against Quattrocchi as well as former Bofors agent Win Chadha, the billionaire Hinduja brothers - Srichand, Gopichand and Prakash - and former Bofors chief Martin Ardbo.

All the charges relate to the 1986 scandal in which Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors allegedly paid 14.2 million dollars in bribes to clinch a weapons contract with India worth a total of 1.3 billion dollars.