New Delhi, Nov 4: B Ramalinga Raju, the disgraced founder of Satyam Computers and prime accused in the company's multi-crore accounting fraud, was today granted bail by the Supreme Court after he spent two years and eight months in the jail.
The apex court took into account that Raju has been in incarceration for considerable time for the offence in which the maximum punishment is seven years jail term and he cooperated during the ongoing trial of the case after his bail was cancelled in October last year.
“On the facts of the case and considering the totality of the circumstances including that the accused has undergone the actual sentence of two years and eight months, we deem it fit to release him on bail,” a bench comprising justices Dalveer Bhandari and Dipak Misra said.
It asked the Special CBI court in Hyderbad to expeditiously complete the trial of the case which was scheduled to have been concluded on July 31 this year.
The court warned that any attempt by Raju and other accused to influence the trial of the case directly or indirectly in any manner would give liberty to the CBI to approach the apex court for the cancellation of their bail.
During the judicial custody, Raju had also spend four months in hospital for heart ailment.
The court also granted bail to Ramalinga Raju's brother B Rama Raju and Satyam's former Chief Financial Officer Vadlamani Srinivas. The bail for the three is on a personal bond of Rs 2 lakh each and two sureties of like amount.
While enlarging the trio on bail, the court directed them to surrender their passports before the trial court if they had not done that so far.
During the hearing, Additional Solicitor General Haren Raval, opposed their bail plea expressing apprehension that they may influence the witnesses and delay the trial of the case.
He said one of the accused granted bail has already adopted the delaying tactics and was taking considerablly long time to cross-examine the investigating officers which in this case are 15 in number.
However, the bench said this cannot be a ground to refuse bail to them and drew the ASG's attention to the 1.50 lakh pages documents which formed the basis of the case. “This is the case which will be decided on the basis of the documents,” the bench said while allaying the apprehension of the CBI that there was a chance of tampering with the evidence.
The bench also said it was an “exceptional” case in which it passed an “exceptional order” as far as possible while cancelling the bail of Raju and other accused last year.
“We are happy that the objective of passing such an exceptional order has been achieved,” the bench said pointing out that 226 prosecution witnesses have been examined in such a short period of eight to nine months in view of the fact that documents relating to the case was running into around 1.5 lakh pages.
“Now to detain a person any further would not be appropriate after he has already served two years and eight months,” the bench said.
There are ten accused in the case. While five others were granted bail by the apex court on October 12, two were given bail earlier by other courts.
The apex court on October 12 had granted bail to four Satyam employees—its former Internal Chief Auditor V S Prabhakar Gupta, executives G Ramakrishna, D Venkatpathi Raju and Ch Srisailam besides PriceWaterhouseCooper's former auditor Subramani Gopalakrishnan.
The five had approached the apex court challenging the August 30 order of the Andhra Pradesh High Court which had rejected their bail pleas.
Ramalinga Raju's younger brother B Suryanarayana Raju and former PWC auditor T Srinivas had been granted bail by different courts earlier.
Ramalinga Raju had been arrested first in January 2009, but his bail was cancelled in October last year by the Supreme Court.
While cancelling his bail, the apex court had stipulated that the accused could file another bail application only after July 31, 2011, if the trial in the case is not completed in the local court.
Following cancellation of his bail on CBI's plea, Ranalinga Raju had surrendered on November 10, last year before a Hyderabad court adjudicating the nation's biggest corporate fraud, allegedly to the tune of Rs 14,000 crore.
