Satyam case: Court to pronounce date of verdict

A special court trying the case of multi-crore rupee accounting fraud in erstwhile Satyam Computer Services Limited (SCSL) today said it will pronounce the date of verdict on July 28. Special judge B V L N Chakravarthi of XXI court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) here posted the matter to July 28 for giving the date for pronouncement of judgement in the case, CBI's special public prosecutor K Venu Madhav said. The court also gave a direction that all the ten accused in the case, including prime accused Satyam Computers founder and former chairman B Ramalinga Raju, should appear before it on that date, the CBI's counsel said.

All the ten accused today attended the court proceedings. However, media persons were not allowed inside the court hall. Touted as the country's biggest accounting fraud, the scam came to light on January 7, 2009, after Ramalinga Raju allegedly confessed to manipulating his company's account books and inflating profits over many years to the tune of several crores of rupees. Raju was arrested by the Crime Investigation Department of Andhra Pradesh Police two days later along with his brother.

In February that year, CBI took over the investigation and filed three charge sheets (on April 7, 2009, November 24, 2009 and January 7, 2010), which were later clubbed into one. Raju and others were charged with offences ranging from cheating, criminal conspiracy, forgery, breach of trust under relevant sections of IPC by way of inflating invoices and incomes, account falsification, faking fixed deposits, besides allegedly falsifying returns through violation of various IT laws. During the trial, the CBI alleged that the scam caused a loss of Rs 14,000 crore to Satyam shareholders, while the defence countered the charges saying the accused were not responsible for the fraud and all the documents filed by the central agency relating to the case were fabricated and not according to law. Raju later retracted his confession statement and contended that all charges levelled by the CBI were false.

Satyam Computer Services Ltd afterwards merged with Tech Mahindra. Besides Raju, his brother and Satyam's former MD B Rama Raju, ex-CFO Vadlamani Srinivas, former PwC auditors Subramani Gopalakrishnan and T Srinivas, Raju's another brother B Suryanarayana Raju, former employees G Ramakrishna, D Venkatpathi Raju and Ch Srisailam, and Satyam's former internal chief auditor V S Prabhakar Gupta are the others accused in the case. At present, all the 10 accused, against whom the Enforcement Directorate also filed a charge sheet in October last year under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, are out on bail.