Washington: Rajat Gupta, a one-time poster boy of Indians in America and former Goldman Sachs Director, on Wednesday began his two-year prison sentence after fighting a protracted legal battle to clear his name in one of the biggest insider trading schemes in US history. The sixty-five-year-old Gupta, once regarded as among the most powerful and influential Indian-Americans on Wall Street, began serving his jail term at a minimum security satellite camp of the Federal Medical Center-Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts. Incidentally Gupta's camp, which currently has 132 inmates, is next to the medical centre where his one-time friend and business associate hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam is serving his 11-year prison sentence for running the massive insider trading scheme.

When Gupta, 65, drives up to the minimum security satellite camp of the Federal Medical Center-Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts, he would have spent more time (almost three years) fighting the case than he will spend inside prison. The IIT and Harvard alumnus, a former director at McKinsey, Goldman Sachs and other storied firms, is expected to serve approximately 85% of his 24-month sentence but he will be eligible for transfer to a halfway house prior to his release date. The expectation is that he will be back home by the end of 2015. Still, it is a devastating blow to illustrious corporate honcho who counted the high and mighty of India and US, including the Clintons, among his friends. But when the long arm of the law, represented among others by New York Southern District Attorney Preet Bharara, reached out, no connection could save him from jail time.