Satyam case final verdict on April 9

Hyderabad: A special CBI court on Monday postponed its verdict in the multi-crore Satyam fraud case to April 9 with a firm directive that it would go ahead with the judgement even if the counsels of the defendants failed to turn up in the court.

Special judge BVLN Chakravarthi said that he would pronounce the verdict on April 9, citing voluminous documents of the case and remarked that he would go ahead with the verdict even if the counsels did not appear but wanted all the accused to be present in the court.

The court completed the trials and witnesses in the six-year-old case that rattled the corporate world after its founder and former chairman B. Ramalinga Raju on January 7, 2009, confessed to manipulating Satyam's account books and inflating profits over many years to the tune of Rs.7,136 crore.

The Central Bureau of Investigation probing the case said that the fraud was much bigger and alleged that the scam had caused a loss of Rs. 14,000 crore to shareholders of Satyam besides the huge damage to the IT sector of the country. The staff at Satyam computers suffered stress when the government suspended the company's board of directors and appointed industry experts to steer the firm out of the woods. Satyam was later sold to Tech Mahindra which has since then merged it.

Around 3,000 documents were marked and 226 witnesses examined during the trial that began nearly six years back. Besides Raju, the nine others accused in the case include his brother and Satyam's former managing director B Rama Raju, former chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas, former PwC auditors Subramani Gopalakrishnan and T Srinivas.

Ramalinga Raju and others were charged with offences ranging from cheating, criminal conspiracy, forgery and breach of trust under relevant sections of IPC, for inflating invoices and incomes, account falsification, faking fixed deposits, besides allegedly falsifying returns through violation of various income tax laws.

In January last year, Ramalinga Raju's wife Nandini Raju and sons Teja Raju and Rama Raju were among 21 relatives of the ex-Satyam boss who were convicted by a Special Court for Economic Offenses here for default in Income Tax payment. A local court on December 8,2014 had convicted Ramalinga Raju,and other accused in connection with complaints filed by Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) for six months' jail term and imposed fines on all the accused. The court also had directed one of the former directors, Krishna G Palepu, to pay fine of a whopping Rs 2.66 crore within two months.

The former Satyam Chairman was released on bail on health grounds after over 13 months behind the bars as an under trial at the Chanchalaguda jail. Investigation by the authorities revealed that Raju led a lavish lifestyle and possessed 321 pairs of shoes, 310 belts, 13 cars including Mercedes and BMWs. His house contained a telescope worth £140,000. It was also claimed that he donated huge quantities of gold to temples in Andhra Pradesh and possessed villas and properties in 63 countries. Raju also owned huge tracts of land in and around Hyderabad and elsewhere in coastal Andhra, most of which have been confiscated by the investigative agencies