[Rings a long time]
Niira Radia: Hello
Senthil Chengalvarayan: Niira, Senthil here
Niira Radia: Hello?
Senthil Chengalvarayan: Hi Niira, Senthil here.
Niira Radia: Hi Senthil, how are you?
Senthil Chengalvarayan: How are you? Can I take a minute?
Niira Radia: Yeah, yeah, sure.
Senthil Chengalvarayan: This is regarding the rather unfortunate thing regarding Mukhesh and children.
Niira Radia: Oh yes, you have seen the letter?
Senthil Chengalvarayan: I have, yes, seen the letter. And to be very honest with you, we have been working on an apology for the last three days. Raghav got me and Harish involved with this. I've just, just this morning I had a meeting with ... as far as we are concerned, as far as I am concerned, as far as Raghav is concerned, children are completely out of bounds...so we are willing to make a completely uncaveated apology
Niira Radia: Hm, hmm
Senthil Chengalvarayan: Without, I mean... Completely uncaveated, completely non-grudging apology..we, we in fact...I have already written an apology and I've just sent it to IG [Inderjit Gupta] this morning to get his opinion on it.
Niira Radia: Hmmm
Senthil Chengalvarayan: So this is just to tell you that we have worked on this apology and we will send it across asap. And now, now, we will have to send it across in the "lawyer format".
Niira Radia: No, but we will also need you to put it in print, in print form.
Senthil Chengalvarayan: No, this is an apology we are going to carry in print.
Niira Radia: Senthil, lemme tell you one thing... I think what really has us [inaudible] is Inderjit's response to my colleague, which was,
Senthil Chengalvarayan: Well, ok
Niira Radia: I mean, what say, y'know...check your sources, we've checked ours
Senthil Chengalvarayan: I think for me it's not about sources. In fact, my line on this... let me just read out something that I have written to Raghav, which is that we should never have dragged the Ambani children into this...in fact, children should be out of bounds till they enter public life. Now that we have cast doubts on their academic credentials, we have implied that they are in Yale because of this... I do not think we have any record of their academic performance. But, this apart, I do not think we did the correct thing as this whole episode could be damaging to the psyche of children at that age. So I really think the apology should be ungrudging and without any caveats and we need to apologise for our action because it was not correct and not just because it's caused distress, and we did not do the correct thing.
Niira Radia: Hmmm..
Senthil Chengalvarayan: No, I completely agree.
Niira Radia: But, Senthil, the information itself was wrong
Senthil Chengalvarayan: That is only secondary. To me, we overstepped the line by getting into territory that is completely personal sphere and entirely out of line... and that it was completely inaccurate... and that it did not matter whether it was right to share that information. We'd also carry a line saying it was completely inaccurate.
Niira Radia: You see, one thing I can certainly tell you: Inderjit is completely out of bounds.
Senthil Chengalvarayan: Inderjit?
Niira Radia: Meaning they are not going to allow Inderjit any access at all.
Senthil Chengalvarayan: I can understand.
Niira Radia: I can tell you that he is just out of bounds. I think the family is so hurt by it that...
Senthil Chengalvarayan: I can understand and I am ashamed that ...
Niira Radia: So, will you send me a copy of the apology first? Or what will you do?
Senthil Chengalvarayan: What I will do is, I will keep you in the loop.
Niira Radia: Hmmm.
Senthil Chengalvarayan: I will have our lawyer respond to this notice and I will just send you the apology that we are writing...
Niira Radia: Hmmm
Senthil Chengalvarayan: And you can also work on a personal level and see if that is acceptable or whether they want something else
Niira Radia: Hmmm. Will you put it on my email?\
Senthil Chengalvarayan: I will just do that. Can I just have your address?
Niira Radia: It is N-double i - r - a
Senthil Chengalvarayan: N?
Niira Radia: Double i... I will just SMS it to you
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Senthil Chengalvarayan: Ok
(Rough transcript, over all correct, needs to be checked with the audio once again to fill in the missing or garbled words)
