As the murky goings on in Satyam unflold, following its Chairman Ramalinga Raju’s astonishing revelation that he had defrauded the company by a minblowing Rs 7000 crore, the subsequent developments left one stumped. For almost 60 hours no attempt was made to take Raju nto custody. The police hid behind the facade that “we can’t arrest him unless a complaint/FIR is filed against him. That the man who had committed the biggest fraud … hitherto… in the history of corporate India continued to enjoy support of his friends in high echelons of politics was quite evident. Finally, as public outrage peaked, the State government felt pressurised to ‘arrest’ him.

And  pray, how was this done? Raju, and his brother, drove up to the police headquarters to “surrender” and then they were “arrested”. The “interrogation” contiued well into the night. And where do you think they spent the night? Not in a jail cell, but at the “police headquarters”. One TV channel even claimed that the two head honchos of Satyam spent the night in “the police guest house”.

While this may or may not be true, it was certaily not an ordinary prison cell for them. Made you wonder at the irony… those who steal small sums go to jail; those who defraud employees, investors, customers, etc of crores get “soft treatment”. On Satuday morning, the police officer who briefed the media, referred to the erstwhile Satyam chief respectfully as the “Chairman of Satyam, Mr Ramalinga Raju”.

In this case there was no “accused” did this.. or “accused” did that….!