New Delhi  - A scandal at one of India's leading information technology companies, Satyam Computer, rocked the country's parliament on Tuesday, with several members demanding details of how the government was handling the case.

Ramalinga Raju, former chairman and founder of Satyam, said on January 9 that he had been falsifying the company's accounts for several years and had inflated assets by over 1 billion dollars.

Raju and two other senior officials of the company are currently in custody.

Federal Company Affairs Minister Prem Chand Gupta told lawmakers that the case had been handed over to India's federal crime investigation bureau as it was a criminal case.

Various aspects of the fraud were also being investigated by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office, the Securities Exchange Board of India and the Income Tax Department, Gupta said.

The role of the company's auditors was also being investigated, he added.

Satyam Computer is India's fourth largest information technology services firm and operates in 66 countries. It has 53,000 employees and counts 185 Fortune 500 companies as its customers.

In a written reply to a lawmaker's question, Gupta also said there was no proposal or recommendation to investigate the working of other IT companies.

Officials and ministers have repeatedly said that the Satyam fraud should be treated as a one-off case and not be seen as a reflection of the working of the Indian IT industry which had good credentials in the country and abroad.

The government has sacked Satyam's earlier board and appointed a new one which is working on ways to rescue the company from the current crisis. It is reportedly considering take-over bids from several companies.

Gupta said the government was not considering bailing out the company.

"The newly constituted board is taking steps to enable the company to meet its immediate financial requirements on the basis of its own strength and the continuity of business operations," Gupta said in his reply.

Kiran Karnik, chairman of Satyam's new board, said last week that some clients had cancelled their contracts with the company. (dpa)