No bail yet for Satyam’s Raju brothers
21 Oct 2011
Satyam Computer Services founder B Ramalinga Raju and his brother B Rama Raju will spend Diwali behind bars along with Satyam's former chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas, as the Supreme Court today refused to grant them immediate bail, saying they had approached it too late.
"Why did you delay filing the petition," a Supreme Court bench asked when senior advocate Ashok Desai, appearing for the trio, pleaded for interim relief saying five other accused in the case have recently been granted bail by the apex court.
The apex court, however, agreed to give an early hearing to their pleas and issued notice to the Central Bureau of Investigation for 3 November, after the Diwali break.
The three were among the 10 persons arrested in connection with the accounting fraud in the information technology firm (since taken over by the Mahindra group and renamed Mahindra Satyam). The fraud, estimated to be worth Rs14,000 crore or more, is considered the biggest corporate scam in Indian history.
The apex court had granted bail to five other accused in the case on 12 October. These were Satyam's former internal chief auditor V S Prabhakar Gupta, executives G Ramakrishna, D Venkatpathi Raju and Ch Srisailam, and former Pricewaterhouse auditor Subramani Gopalakrishnan.
The five had approached the apex court challenging the 30 August order of the Andhra Pradesh High Court which had rejected their bail pleas.