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The Bhopal gas tragedy, the 1984 Sikh riots, the Bombay riots, the Gujarat riots, various corporate and stock market scandals (Harshad Mehta, Ketan Parekh) are just a few examples where the Indian judicial system as well as successive governments have failed miserably.

Today’s news reports that 5 people involved in the Satyam scam have been given bail. Dont be surprised when Ramalinga Raju who is living like a king in the NIMS hospital but refuses to appear in courts or even take part in a televideo trial will soon be released on bail too.

Every Tom, Dick and Harry can make out that the various excuses given by criminals and undertrials are fake and yet our courts accept those excuses and keep pushing the dates of the cases.  A friend of mine who was working under a famous lawyer in Hyderabad used to tell numerous stories of how his boss used to hoodwink the courts with fake medical leaves, out of station kinda excuses to not attend the court.  Heck, the lawyer even used to give excuses like his car’s tyre got punctured and excused himself from attending court.  I wonder if the judge didnt remind the lawyer that there is something called autos, taxis or other public transport that he could have taken to attend court.

Till the government amends the laws to ensure that every case needs to be wrapped up in a certain amount of time no matter what the excuse, this charade will keep going on.   It took 26 years for the courts to find the guilty in the Bhopal gas carnage.  People are still suffering the after effects.  The wounds of the survivors of the Sikh riots led by the Congress ministers, the muslims killed in Gujarat with the active participation of the ruling BJP and the current CM Narendra Modi, the riots of Bombay perpetrated by the Thuggerays….the list goes on.

Till the feet of our leaders are held to the fire and action demanded from them, i dont see any closure for the millions of people on whom the actual crime is not the injustice, but the judicial system and the government that was elected to keep them safe from harm insults them repeatedly by denying them justice.

Fraudulent sales, inflated invoices, accrued interest and understated liabilities were some of the major methods that Ramalinga Raju and his henchmen used in order to make Satyam Computers Services Ltd appear highly profitable and keep the share price high, so that he could take away a whopping Rs2,743 crore out of the company. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) explained this and other intricacies of its investigation into Satyam at a media workshop in Mumbai.

JL Negi, general manager, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on deputation to the CBI explained how Ramalinga Raju falsified facts and puffed up results. He said, the company benchmarked its performance to that of Infosys. The financial numbers were massaged through fraudulent sales- invoices generated through “Excel porting”, which allowed the founder of Satyam and his co-conspirators to raise invoices bypassing the regular system and obfuscating an audit trail. In the period from April 2003 to December 2008, 7,561 fake invoices were created by a set of people close to Raju, who had access to the system. The fake invoices generated without purchase orders were shown as “hidden” and could only be accessed by a chosen core group. The CBI alleges that Mr Raju even asked his software team to develop certain products for seven non-existent customers.

These were Mobitel, Cellnet, E-care, Synony, Northsea, Autotech and Hargreaves. Fake revenue was recognized for these products by generating fictitious email as if they originated from these customers.  A domain was created in rediffmail to send these emails and 63 invoices were generated to raise Rs430.66 crore. The company even booked Rs31.18 crore as forex profit on account of fictitious sales.

Read this full article in livemint on how Ramanlinga Raju used his position in Satyam to perpetrate the scam.  You have to simply say hats off for the way he manipulated the scam.

Not to mention a big kick on the backside of the regulators, law enforcement agencies who let the scam happen for years and kept their eyes shut.

Past articles on the Satyam scam

The Satyam shocker continues…
Ramalinga Raju – The fraud King
Satyam’s pack of lies crumble
The Satyam – Maytas flip flop

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Had been to Hyderabad for a short 4 day trip as my brother was getting married.  Back in Singapore in the morning, and was in the office early too.  But very tired as there was the usual crying of kids in the flight and combine with it the cattle class airlines called Tiger airways.  The seats are so close to each other that it seems that the seats have been designed for pygmies.

Travelled via a garbage dump of an airport called the Chennai airport, a so called ISO 9001 certified airport which they so proudly display on the airport.  But from the floor with lousy and dusty tiles to leaky and stinking toilets to a new domestic arrival hall where the aircon is set so low that its enough to freeze you to haphazardly placed tubelights in the cielings. The Chennai airport is the best example of a pathetic government and its abject apathy towards its citizens and the infrastructure.

If this is what the Airports Authority of India (AAI) can provide, its high time, the Chennai airport is handed over to some private company.  When you travel from the sleek, ultra efficient, modern and brilliant Hyderabad airport, Chennai airport reminds you of some village in the remote part of India.  Even the Chennai central railway station is the same, smelly and dirty.  Often making me wonder which moron named Chennai a Metro city.

People cutting queues while showing off their official powers, indifferent authorities, misplacing luggage, airport employees who steal stuff from your luggage, ripping off your hard earned money while paying for food is how you can describe the Chennai airport.  Just outside the airport you have a huge congregation of people waiting everytime as if some superstar is arriving.  With cars, buses, two wheelers and everything in such close proximity of the airport, its just a matter of time before you might hear about a terrorist attack there.  The policemen / women just go about their motions as if they are in la-la land.

And then look at the issues in our elections starting tomorrow, the Samajwadi Party has an agenda to get rid of English and Computers.  Meanwhile, the moron called Mulayam Yadav has both his sons studying in an english medium college. The same is the case with his chamcha Amar Singh.

Some moron wants to gift colour TV and another one free rice as if the national exchequer is their father’s property. The Election Commission should come out with a ruling that the party promising freebies in the manifesto should foot half of the bill for the freebies, then we can see the fun.

So, who do you vote for?  The openly communal BJP which talks and commits hatred against a section of people or who dont follow their Hindutava (dunno what kind of tava it is) manifesto or Congress who has perfected the art of playing divisive politics or the Communists who are nothing but agents of the Communist Party of China or the scores of uneducated and criminals with enough murders and rapes in their resume so as to be called legends in their fields?

You make the call.  Meanwhile, do go out and vote. Vote against divisive, communal, casteist, socialist parties and people with criminal records against their name (oops, that rules out most of the leaders of all parties).

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