This paper reports a pilot study related to public apologies in India, with reference to certain keywords found in them. The study is of importance as the choice of lexical items holds importance which goes beyond the surface meaning of the words. The analysis of the lexical items has been done using interlinked digital lexical resources which, in future, can lend this study to computational tasks related to opinion mining, sentiment analysis and document classification. The study attempts an in-depth psycholinguistic analysis of whether the apology conveys a sincerity of intent or is it a mere ritualistic exercise to control and repair damage.