NEW DELHI (AFP) - Indian police won approval Friday to definitively close an investigation into an Italian businessman linked to one of India's biggest corruption scandals of the 1980s.

A Delhi court allowed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to drop the case against Ottavio Quattrocchi, saying further enquiries were a waste of time and money.

"If the logical conclusion of a case (a prosecution) is not possible then it is better to leave the issue," Magistrate Vinod Yadav said.

"How long we will spend through our nose the hard-earned money of the common people?" he asked, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.

Last year, the CBI sought to drop long-standing charges against Quattrocchi, which led to claims from the opposition that the ruling Congress party was trying to bury the embarrassing episode.

Quattrocchi, linked to former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was suspected of being a middleman in a deal for Swedish arms group AB Bofors to sell 410 howitzer guns to India.

Attempts to extradite Quattrocchi to India in 2007 after he was arrested in Argentina had failed.

The Swedish group was accused of paying bribes of $1.3 billion to secure the sale of the artillery, though the company and all those accused have always maintained their innocence.

Rajiv Gandhi was voted out of office in 1989 largely over the Bofors deal. He was assassinated in 1991 by ethnic Tamil extremists.

His Italian-born wife Sonia today heads the Congress party, which is again embroiled in a host of corruption scandals.

India's Income Tax department in January concluded 410 million rupees ($9 million) was paid in kickbacks to Quattrocchi and an Indian arms dealer, Win Chadha, to clinch the gun contract.