SC grants bail to Ramalinga Raju

In a relief to Satyam's disgraced founder B Ramalinga Raju and his brother B Rama Raju, the Supreme Court on Friday granted them bail in the multi-crore accounting fraud involving the software firm.

Along with Raju brothers, a bench of justices Dalveer Bhandari and Dipak Misra also granted bail to Satyam's former Chief Financial Officer Vadlamani Srinivas on a personal bond of Rs 2 lakh each with two sureties of same amount.

While grating the trio bail, the court directed them to surrender their passports before the trial court if they had not done that so far.

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 court also allowed CBI to approach it for modification of its bail order in case the accused were found misusing their freedom granted by it.

While passing the order, the court took into account the fact that the accused have already spent two years and eight months behind bars for their alleged offences carrying a maximum punishment of seven years.

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On October 12, the apex court 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.

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Following cancellation of his bail on CBI's plea, Ramalinga 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 (Rs 140 billion).