In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, CPI parliamentarian from Lok Sabha, Gurudas Dasgupta, specified that the probe into the fraud by former Satyam chairman B Ramalinga Raju should be initiated in order to reinforce accountability that listed companies have towards SEBI.

Dasgupta told reporters in Kolkata that the probe is needed to “restore the confidence of the market”.

The CPI leader, who described the fraud as the Indian version of the Enron scam, said he had intimated the Prime Minister that it was very important to order a judicial probe because of current economic recession that has gripped the market.

“Market confidence is more important and corporate delinquency must be nipped in the bud,” Dasgupta said in his letter. The malpractices perpetrated by the Satyam management were ominous.

“It is only a repetition of history,” he wrote. “Harshad Mehta did the same by breaking open vaults of banks to mobilise funds for creating hypervolatility of stock market. Ketan Parekh did the same mistake. Now accounts have been fudged in connivance with the delinquent auditors. It is not a question of perpetrating criminality, fudging the accounts and duping the investors. It is a total collapse of the regulatory system.”