Satyam Case: All accused asked to appear in court on 27 Oct

A local court trying the case of multi-crore accounting fraud in erstwhile Satyam Computer Services Limited (SCSL) on Monday ordered all the accused to appear on 27 October. 

The court has not given any date for judgement, CBI special public prosecutor K Surender said. The 10 accused in the case include prime accused Satyam Computers founder and former chairman B Ramalinga Raju, his extended family, Satyam officials and a couple of former Pricewater Cooperhouse auditors. The trial in Satyam fraud case had concluded in the second half of June before the special court, which examined 216 witnesses and marked 3,038 documents during the course of the hearing. Touted as the country’s biggest accounting fraud, the scam came to light on 7 January, 2009, after Raju allegedly 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 AP Police two days later along with his brother. In February that year, CBI took over the investigation and filed three charge sheets (on 7 April, 2009, 24 November, 2009 and 7 January, 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 falsifying returns through violation of IT laws.