"When companies adopt whistle blower policies, I suspect not much is done to sensitise employees and other stakeholders how it can be implemented," said Shriram Subramanian, founder and managing director, InGovern Research Services Pvt. Ltd.

"Even when I was with Infosys from 2002 to 2010, while I remember having been given a whistle-blower policy, there isn't much beyond it in terms of educating employees," he said.

Subramanian said he came across many instances where employees from the accounts departments wrote anonymously to him regarding accounting irregularities at their companies. However, they aren't aware of how they can be whistle blowers or which regulators to approach, he pointed out. "The lack of proactive regulators and great rewards could be another reason. The fines levied by our regulators are minuscule in comparison to offence. Even when regulators have imposed fines, many of their decisions are challenged in courts, leading to protracted decisions," Subramanian said.

Another flaw in the Indian system relates to the protection of the witness. "This is critical and is missing in our system," says Harish HV, partner -India leadership team at Grant Thornton. "The complaint could be about a person in power and you need extraordinary courage to blow the whistle," he said.

Another impediment to whistle blowing in India is that a lot of people are not sure whether the board is really independent or not.

Nishchae Suri, partner and head of people and change at KPMG in India, echoes this sentiment. "They (the board of companies) have to promote a culture of good governance and trust."

Within corporate India, there have been hardly any case of whistle-blowers being brought into the public domain. Legal heads say companies tend to put a lid on such cases by dealing with them internally to avoid public attention and scandal.

Kalpana Morparia, CEO of JP Morgan India, however, says the whistle-blower policy is taken seriously by companies here. "Organisations, especially the listed companies, encourage employees to raise or highlight concerns around financial irregularities, sexual harassment or any fraud to a third party or a board member and it is taken up very seriously."