Court defers judgment in criminal aspect of Satyam Computer scam

The judgment in the criminal aspect of Satyam Computer accounting scandal, which was supposed to be delivered by a special court in Hyderabad today has been postponed till 9 March.

The court was to pronounce the verdict in three cases filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation since April 2009.

In addition to company chairman B Ramalinga Raju nine other accused in the cases, including his two brothers, were present in the court hall when proceedings got under way amid an uneasy silence at 10.30 am.

After consulting the prosecution and the defence, judge BVL Chakravarthy announced deferring the judgement as it required writing hundreds of pages. He added there would be no further postponements after 9 March.

''You know the volume of the case…it requires some more time (to study). You may be satisfied or not (with the outcome), but I must satisfy myself (before coming to a conclusion). Typing of the judgement itself needs 2-3 weeks,'' the judge told prosecution and defence counsels, PTI reported.

The trial that started nearly six years ago recorded the testimony of 226 witnesses with around 3,000 documents marked.

The scam, which turned out to the country's biggest accounting fraud, came to light on 7 January 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.

Former PwC auditors Subramani Gopalakrishnan and T Srinivas, another brother of Raju, 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 facing charges in the scam.

The Crime Investigation Department of Andhra Pradesh Police arrested Raju two days after he allegedly confessed to the fraud, along with his brother Rama Raju and others.

Raju and the other accused face charges of 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.

The CBI taking over the investigation in February 2009, filed three charge sheets (on 7 April 2009, 24 November 2009 and 7 January 2010), which were later clubbed into one.