File photo of Satyam Computers founder and former chairman B Ramalinga Raju.
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 today 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) in Hyderabad 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 (CID) 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.
According to CBI, the accounting fraud in Satyam was perpetrated over a period of 10 years, wherein Raju and other accused manipulated and fabricated records and projected revenues of the company which never existed.
During the trial, the CBI alleged that the scam caused a loss of Rs 14,000 crore to Satyam shareholders, while the defence countered the charges saying the accused are not responsible for the fraud and all the documents filed by the central agency relating to the case are fabricated and not according to law.
Besides Raju, his brother and Satyam's former MD B Rama Raju, ex-CFO Vadlamani Srinivas, former PwC auditors Subramani Gopalakrishnan and T Srinivas, Raju's another brother B Suryanarayana Raju, former employees G Ramakrishna, D Venkatpathi Raju and Ch Srisailam, and Satyam's former internal chief auditor V S Prabhakar Gupta were the others accused in the case.
At present, all the 10 accused, against whom the Enforcement Directorate also filed a charge sheet in October last year under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, are out on bail.