HYDERABAD: The special court dealing with the multi-crore accounting fraud in the erstwhile Satyam Computer Services Limited on Monday postponed the verdict to April 9.
The much-awaited verdict was earlier slated to be pronounced on Monday. All the 10 accused, including former Satyam chairman Ramalinga Raju, attended the court proceedings on Monday.
During the last hearing on Dec 23, 2014, special judge BVLN Chakravarthi, while citing voluminous documents of the case, had said that he would pronounce the verdict on March 9.
About 3,038 documents were marked and 226 witnesses were examined during the trial that began nearly six years back. The case was probed by the CBI. Trial in the case was completed in June last year.
Other accused in the case included Ramalinga Raju’s brother and the company’s former managing director B Rama Raju, former chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas, former Price Waterhouse auditors S Gopalakrishnan and Srinivas Talluri, B Suryanarayana Raju, former employees G Ramakrishna, D Venkatpathi Raju and Ch Srisailam, and Satyam’s former internal chief auditor VS Prabhakar Gupta.
The scam came to light on January 7, 2009, after Ramalinga Raju confessed to manipulating the company’s account books and inflating profits to the tune of several crores. He was arrested on Jan 7, 2009. In Feb that year, the CBI took charge of the probe and filed three charge sheets (on April 7, 2009, November 24, 2009 and January 7, 2010). Later, the charge sheets were clubbed into one.
The CBI, in its chargesheet, had termed the Satyam case as India’s biggest corporate fraud case. Loss to the investors was to the tune of `14,162 crore. Ramalinga Raju and members of his family have secured illegal gains to the tune of about `2,743 crore by playing various tricks.
Raju, along with others, were charged with offences under various Sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 409 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will), 468 (forgery for cheating), 471(using forged documents as genuine) and 477-A (falsification of accounts).
Currently, all the accused are out on bail.