New Delhi – Employees of India’s software major Satyam, that has been rocked by a 1.45-billion-dollar accounting fraud, were uncertain about their future as business leaders worried about the scam’s impact on corporate India, media reports said Thursday.

Satyam chairman B Ramalinga Raju quit Wednesday after admitting that the company, India’s fourth-biggest software firm, had been manipulating its accounts over years by inflating cash and bank balances.

The whereabouts of Raju – who faces a 10-year jail term for his role in one of the worst corporate frauds in India in recent years – were unclear, local news channels reported.

Meanwhile, more than 53,000 employees of the company that has operations across the world, faced an uncertain future, the CNN-IBN news channel said in its report.

Although the pink slips have not arrived yet, nearly 14,000 employees have already submitted their resumes to domestic job portals like Naukri. com.

“By today up to 13,800, almost 14,000 employees have circulated their biodatas on Naukri. There will be many who are not on the website,” Kris Lakshmikanth, managing director of Headhunters, a recruitment agency, told the news channel.

“In fact many senior Satyam executives are shocked and have approached me looking for options,” he added.

Employees were seen huddled in small groups outside the company’s corporate office in southern Hyderabad city, discussing the issue.

“We are now worried about our jobs,” Raghu, a Satyam employee told the PTI news agency. The possibility of a takeover looks distant, further compounding the worries of employees.

Until last year, Satyam was among the top three employers in India and there was stiff competition amongst software engineers in the country to make it in the company.

In a letter to Satyam’s employees, interim CEO Ram Mynampati said a team consisting of senior leaders had been formed to steer the company through the challenging phase.

“Let us fight this battle together. I am confident that we will emerge stronger, together,” Mynampati said in the letter.

Trading on India’s bourses was closed Thursday to mark the Muslim month of Muharram but on Wednesday, the news of the fraud pulled down the benchmark Sensex stock index 7.25 per cent – with the company’s shares plunging nearly 78 per cent.

India’s National Stock Exchange (NSE) removed the firm from its benchmark index Nifty. Satyam, which means “truth” in the Sanskrit language, also faces a probe by the government’s Serious Fraud Investigation Office.

Indian newspapers said the scam raised questions about the quality of corporate governance in India and made comparisons to the collapse of the US energy major Enron Corp.

Local reports also talked about how the episode would affect global investor and corporate sentiment and the perception of India as a major outsourcing hub.

“Much more than the fate of one company and its investors is at stake here, the scandal could taint the entire edifice of outsourcing,” the English-language Hindustan Times said in its editorial.

“The scale of the scam and the elaborate cover-up is mind boggling. Government has to show to the world that we take corporate malfunctions seriously,” Nandan Nilekani, co-chairman of Indian software giant Infosys, told CNN-IBN. (dpa)