M A I N   N E W S

Satyam’s Raju on bail
Suresh Dharur
Tribune News Service

Hyderabad, August 18
After 19 months of incarceration, former chairman of Satyam Computers and the brain behind India’s biggest corporate fraud B Ramalinga Raju was today granted conditional bail by the Andhra Pradesh High Court on health grounds.

Raju, undergoing treatment at a city hospital for Hepatitis-C infection since September last year, was given bail on the condition that he should not leave the city until further orders and furnish two sureties of Rs 20 lakh each.

While granting the bail, Justice Raja Elango asked Raju to appear before the investigating agency every day after his discharge from the hospital and cooperate in the investigation.

“My client will scrupulously follow the bail conditions,” Raju’s counsel Bharath Kumar said. With this, all 10 key accused in the scam are out on bail, raising serious doubts over the fate of the high-profile case, whose trial is yet to begin.

Raju has been refusing to appear before the trial court on the ground that he was not in a position to move out of the hospital.

The CBI, which is investigating the multi-crore accounting fraud, said it would move the Supreme Court challenging the bail order. The investigating agency argued that the main accused might tamper with the evidence and influence the witnesses if released on bail. It also questioned the medical reports of the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences, where Raju was undergoing treatment, describing his condition as “precarious”.

The CBI had filed two chargesheets in April and November last year, putting the loss suffered by investors in the fraud at Rs 14,000 crore and alleging that Raju had siphoned off huge money to tax-haven countries like Mauritius.

As per the chargesheet, the accused forged board resolutions, obtained loans without authorisation to the tune of Rs 1,220 crore, prepared fake invoices worth Rs 430 crore and purchased properties at several places under benami names.

However, the case could not make much headway after Raju got himself admitted to hospital and started evading trial.

The high court had last month granted bail to five other key accused in the case, including Raju’s younger brother and former Satyam managing director Rama Raju and former chief financial officer V Srinivas. The remaining accused had also secured bail.

Ramalinga Raju had stunned the corporate world on January 7 last year when he confessed to massive fraud in the IT Company he had founded, inflating profits and fudging account books. He and nine others were arrested on charges of criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery and falsification of accounts. He was arrested on January 9 and moved to Chanchalguda Central Prison here.