Italian Marines to come back, bribe authorities, and go back
India and Italy have worked out a mutually beneficial solution to the brewing diplomatic trouble between the two countries owing to Italy’s refusal to send its marines back to India for court trials.
As part of the solution, Italian marines will come back to India, get locked in jail for a couple of weeks, then pay bribe to jail authorities, and escape back to Italy after paying further bribes to concerned authorities like passport officers, security officers, et al.
“This way, the case of runaway Italian marines will become a corruption case rather than a diplomatic row, and in India, corruption cases are no more a cause of concern,” said a high-placed source in the Government of India.
“Do you even remember which is the latest scam? I’m sure you have stopped counting,” the source correctly claimed.
“Also, IPL will start in a few weeks, so we hope that Italian Marines’ second escape won’t even make news,” the source added.
The source claimed that this plan was finalized after the Italian ambassador was summoned by the External Affairs Ministry yesterday. Apparently, Italians immediately agreed to the proposal and will be sending their marines back to India after a week or so.
“Italy a long experience in bribing Indian authorities – from Bofors to the latest VVIP chopper scam – and they are confident that they could successfully carry out another bribing operation to get the marines back,” the source explained why Italians agreed for a “compromise”.
When asked why Italy agreed to taking this middle path even though their middle finger to India wouldn’t have caused them much harm, the source claimed, rather shockingly, that Italy was very afraid of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s warning of “consequences” if Italian marines didn’t return to India.
Then the source started laughing. “Just kidding,” the source came back to telling the truth, “We have no idea. Maybe Italy was bribed to bribe us back.”