ON THE EVENING OF 9 APRIL, a select group of Delhi’s dapper elite gathered at the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency. After about a half hour’s socialising, aided by an assortment of teas and starters, Chiki Sarkar, the co-founder of Juggernaut Books, introduced the evening’s speakers.
“Whenever we now think of Rajat Gupta,” she said, “we think of a simple question—did he or didn’t he?”
Juggernaut was releasing Mind Without Fear, Gupta’s memoir, which charts his rise to becoming the first Indian-origin managing director of McKinsey, and his subsequent felony conviction in a high-profile insider-trading scandal that shook business circles in 2012. The conviction resulted in a two-year prison sentence, which Gupta completed in 2016. After his release, Gupta sought to overturn his conviction, but in January this year, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit—one of the United States’ 13 appellate courts, which includes judicial districts in New York, Connecticut and Vermont—ruled against him. His memoir, and its accompanying media campaign, seemed to be a final attempt at public rehabilitation.
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