Jethmalani sent another letter to the PM on April 20 responding to Jaya's allegations.

However, in his first letter itself -- copies of which he later sent to Revenue Secretary N K Singh and Attorney General Soli Sorbajee -- Jethmalani had denied the charges and alleged that Swamy ``illegitimately'' acquired Rs 15 crore.

Jethmalani confirms he wrote such a letter but declines to discuss its contents. Swamy, when asked to comment on Jethmalani's allegation, says: ``If this is so, let the Prime Minister take action against me.''

In his March 23 letter, Jethmalani claims that the 1987-89 Bofors investigations --carried out by him, Swamy and Chandraswami -- cost $200,000.

The probe, Jethmalani claims, needed travel to Sweden and Panama as well as the hiring of detectives. Chandraswami, he alleges, had ``pretended'' to cooperate with them but was at the same time using the investigations to ``strike a deal'' with Rajiv Gandhi.

Interestingly, in his letter, Jethmalani writes: ``You (Vajpayee) will recall that on one of your visits to New York, you had met Chandraswami at my son Janak's residence...'' He says that since he could not spend much time outside India, he asked Chandraswami to handle the bulk of the private investigations into the deal.

Much of the $200,000 required, Jethmalani claims, came from his son, daughter and sister. Only a part, he says, came from Chandraswami himself. According to the letter: ``Chandraswami had contributed about US $50,000 through his devotee, Mr Miller...But by the end of 1989, I realised that Chandraswami had made up with Rajiv Gandhi and was in fact doing everything tofrustrate the investigations''

When asked about this explanation, Swamy told The Indian Express that the point here was not where the foreign funds came from but how these were accepted in contravention of FERA laws. ``Jethmalani has already accepted before a court of law that he took the money. And even if the money contributed by Chandraswami was actually that of Mr Miller, how could he have accepted it from a foreigner? This is a violation of Section 8(i) of FERA,'' says Swamy.

However, in his letter, Jethmalani says that far from violating FERA laws, he had been earning huge amounts of foreign exchange for the country -- more than half a million dollars through his professional practice. Last year, he claims, he paid Rs 1 crore in tax. ``So why do I need to commit a FERA offence for a paltry sum of $50,000?'' he says . Towards the end Jethmalani says he has access to copies of Swamy's bank accounts ``showing that by various illegitimate methods, he collected about Rs 15 crore.'' These funds, healleges, were collected ``either by cheating or blackmail.''