JOIN USSatyam Raju's bail cancelled
A bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma said it would not express any view while cancelling the bail of the accused. Any observation at this stage might influence the trial, said the Bench while refusing to give a detailed order on the issue.
The Bench directed the accused — Raju, Rama Raju, V Srinivas, G Ramakrishna, D Venkatapathy Raju and Ch Srisailam to surrender before the police by November 8, 2010. The apex court issued direction to the Special Court in Hyderabad to complete the trial by July 31, 2011.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had challenged the Andhra Pradesh High Court order that granted bail to the accused. Additional Solicitor General Hirenbhai Rawal had submitted that Raju had tried to influence one of the witnesses during his bail period. The CBI in an affidavit said that Ramalinga Raju had misused his liberty during the bail period by trying to influence M/s Gland Pharma Limited.
The CBI had recorded the statement of Bandreddi Narasimha Rao, Director of M/S Gland Pharma on 21-09-2019, the affidavit said. Senior advocate Ashok Desai, appearing for Ramalinga Raju had submitted that there was no allegation of misconduct during the bail period and the accused had been appearing before the special court on all dates even when he was hospitalised.
Desai had said the allegation against Raju and others was that they had inflated the accounts, but there was no charge of siphoning off the money from the company. Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Raju’s younger brother D Venkatapathy Raju said the accused were not involved in cheating and the company they had floated still existed.
Raju was in jail for more than one-and-half years and the trial would take many more years, Rohatgi said. There are 693 witnesses and 1,0,60,000 pages of chargesheet and nobody had abused the bail conditions after being released, he said.
Ramalinga Raju, who resigned as chairman of Satyam Computer Services Ltd after saying he overstated the company’s assets by Rs 4,500 crore, was granted bail by the Andhra Pradesh High Court in Hyderabad on August 18. The High Court had granted bail to Raju on the ground that there was no possibility of early completion of trial.