Tehelka stings Satyam’s Raju
By Bala Shah

For 10 years, Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju was one of the golden men of the Indian IT-ITES sector. Raju was feted by politicians and big business.  He was awarded the Golden Peacock Award for Corporate Governance in 2008 as well as the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2007.  By now, it is history that Satyam was a house of cards build by con man Raju and his family.

Techgoss was one of the few news sites regularly running stories about all that was rotten inside Satyam.  On Dec 24, 2008, Techgoss had published a story titled ‘Satyam bosses to exit’ which predicted the Board would dump Mr. Raju and his coterie by Dec 29, 2008.   On Jan 7, 2009, Mr. Raju resigned admitting fudging accounts to the tune of $1.5 Billion.  Most believe that Raju has hidden hundreds of millions of dollars in secret bank accounts.

Like most rich and well connected Indian criminals, Mr. Raju used every trick in the book to avoid spending time in jail.  Complaining of poor health, Mr. Raju is ensconced in the luxury wing of a reputed hospital for the last nine months.  He claims he is too sick to attend court.

Indian news website Tehelka shot to international prominence in 2001 when it did a masterly sting operation to expose corruption in the tens of billions of dollars spent by the Indian Government in buying military equipment. Tehelka even filmed the BJP President Mr. Bangaru Laxman accepting a bribe of Rs. 1 Lakh.  The then BJP Government came down on Tehelka like a ton of bricks. Tehelka financiers and reporters were jailed on trumped up charges.  Advertisers were warned off.  But Tehelka fought back and when Congress returned to power, one of the first things that Sonia Gandhi did was to write to Prime Minister Singh asking him to look into all the false legal cases against Tehelka. 

Tehelka’s latest sting operation exposes Mr. Raju’s false claims that he is living in the VIP wing of the NIMS hospital for 9 months because he is too sick to participate in the judicial process on how he frauded Satyam employees and share holders.  Each private room in this Andhra Pradesh based hospital costs Rs, 90,000 a month.  The costs of the medical treatment are separate.  

Tehelka’s sting operation video shows Mr. Raju taking a brisk 20 minute walk.  The Tehelka article also presents evidence that Mr. Raju is healthy enough to interact and joke with the hospital staff even as he claims in court he is too sick to even testify via videolink