Raju retracts confession; Khurshid not surprised

Corporate Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on Friday said that he is not surprised that B Ramalinga Raju has retracted his infamous January, 2009, confession of perpetrating accounting fraud at Satyam.

"I am not surprised. When lawyers come in picture, the way clients conduct themselves is well known," Khurshid told reporters on the sidelines of an Assocham event in New Delhi.

Khurshid's statement comes amid news that Raju has submitted in his bail application to the Andhra Pradesh high court that he was falsely implicated and the allegations against him were absolutely false and not supported by any credible evidence.

Interestingly, on the morning of January 7, 2009, Raju himself had written a letter to Sebi chairman C B Bhave confessing that he had been fudging the account books of Satyam Computer Services for several years.

Now Mahindra Satyam, the beleaguered IT firm was later that year taken over by Tech Mahindra through a competitive bidding process.

Further, responding to another query on former Carbide India's non-executive chairman Keshub Mahindra's re-election as the chairman of the Mahindra & Mahindra group, Khurshid said, "I have no comment. There are legal processes that have to be followed and I think he has competent lawyers and they must have got appropriate orders. I am sure they know what to do."

Mahindra and six others were sentenced to two years imprisonment by a Bhopal court on charges of negligence and culpable homicide not amounting to murder in the Bhopal gas tragedy case. While one accused passed away during the course of the trial, Carbide's former head Warren Anderson was not tried.

The Bhopal tragedy, which was caused by leakage of methyl isocyanate gas on the night of December 2, 1984, claimed over 15,000 lives.