Satyam fraud case verdict date may be fixed tomorrow

Touted as the country's biggest accounting fraud, the scam came to light on Jan 7, 2009

Nearly five-and-half-years after the multi-crore accounting fraud surfaced in erstwhile Satyam Computer Services Limited, a special court set up to try the sensational case is likely to fix tomorrow the date for pronouncement of the much-awaited verdict.

The trial in Satyam fraud case concluded last week before the special court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) here which examined 216 witnesses and marked 3,038 documents during the course of the hearing.

Special judge B V L N Chakravarti will probably give a date tomorrow for judgement in the case, in which erstwhile Satyam Computers founder and former chairman B Ramalinga Raju is the prime accused, CBI officials told PTI.

Touted as the country's biggest accounting fraud, the scam came to light on January 7, 2009, after Ramalinga Raju confessed to manipulating his company's account books and inflating profits over many years to the tune of several crores of rupees.

Raju was arrested by the Crime Investigation Department of Andhra Pradesh Police two days later along with his brother.

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

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

Raju later retracted his confession statement and contended that all charges levelled by the CBI are false.

Satyam Computer Services Ltd later merged with Tech Mahindra.