Five accused in Satyam scam get bail

By S A Ishaqui
Hyderabad, July 19:Decks are cleared for B Rama Raju, one of the key accused in the multi crore Satyam scam to come out on bail, 19 months after one of the country’s biggest corporate scam broke out on January 7, 2009.

The AP High Court granted bail to Rama Raju, former managing director of the Satyam
Computer Services Ltd and brother of the master mind of the scam Ramalinga Raju. The
court also granted bail to Srinivas Vadlamani, former CFO of the company and three other top brass of the company G Ramakrishna, Ch Srisailam and D Venkatpathy Raju.

With this, all Satyam accused except B Ramalinga Raju have got bails from various courts on different occasions.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested B Ramalinga Raju, founder of the Satyam Computers and nine others for the accounting fraud in the company which shook the whole country.

Justice Raja Elango while granting the bail considered the view of the Supreme Court in Srinivas Talluri’s case. The Apex Court granted bail to Srinivas who is an accused in Stayam scam without expressing any opinion on the merits of the case.

Mr. Gopal Subramanium, solicitor- general objected the bail petitions by contending that the accused are very influential people and it won’t be a sensible thing to let them out as they would try to tamper evidence and persuade the witness in their favor.

He told the court that the investigation is still on in the case and the CBI will file an additional charge sheet in the case.

Mr. T Niranjan Reddy, special public prosecutor said that within six months trial is likely to be completed in the case and at this stage granting bail will hamper the proceedings of the case.

Referring to the contentions of the solicitor-general and the CBI counsel , the judge observed that considering voluminous records and more than 400 witnesses have to be examined during the trial, it may not be able to conclude within the six months.

The judge took into consideration the arguments on behalf of the accused that the accused may not be able to tamper with the records as most of documents are with the court and the company is under new management and there may not be any access to the documents or other employees to influence them.

The judge ruled that the accused should submit two sureties of Rs 20 lakhs each and they will be available to the investigation officers. The judge directed them to present themselves before the investigation officer every day and desist from influencing the witnesses and may not interfere in the trial.

It may be mentioned that the main architect of this scam is still behind the bars. The Supreme Court had rejected his plea for the bail when he applied for it in March 2010.

Recently the High Court has rejected the bail plea of Ramalinga Raju.
The High Court granted bail to Pricewaterhouse (PwC) auditor S Gopalakrishnan and former internal auditor Prabhakar Gupta a week ago.
The lower court in March 2009, granted anticipatory bail to B Suryanarayana Raju, brother of Ramalinga Raju.