CBI files chargesheet against Raju, 8 others Satyam scam case

Hyderabad, Apr 7 (PTI) After a six-week long probe into
Satyam scam case, country's biggest corporate fraud, the CBI
Tuesday filed a chargesheet against nine people, including the
company's tainted founder chairman B Ramalinga Raju and his
two brothers.

CBI filed the 300-page chargesheet in the designated
court here against Raju, his brothers Suryanarayana Raju and
Rama Raju and six others.

The investigating agency chargesheeted the accused under
section 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating), 419
(cheating by personation), 467 (forgery of valuable security),
468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (using forged
documents as genuine), 477-A (falsification of accounts) and
201 of IPC (causing disappearance of evidence).

The others named in the chargesheet include company's
former CFO Vadlamani Srinivas, Vice President (Finance) G
Ramakrishna, and two employess D Venkatpathi Raju and
Srisailam, both in the finance wing.

The chargesheet has also named two sacked auditors of
PricewaterHouse -- S Gopalkrishnan and Talluri Srinivas.

The CBI after registering the case on February 20 had
formed a multi-disciplinary investigation team (MDIT) to probe
the scam involving thousands of crores of rupees to complete
the investigation in the case.

Barring Suryanarayana Raju, who is a director with SRSR
Advisory Services, all others named in the chargesheet are at
present lodged in the Chanchalguda jail under judicial
custody. Suryanarayana had secured an anticipatory bail.

DIG V V Lakshmi Narayana, who led the probe, said the
CBI has completed the investigation in a record time of 45
days.

The number of documents were loaded in 22 big trunks
and were brought to the court in two trucks.

Meanwhile, the court Tuesday allowed the CBI to obtain
specimen signatures and hand-writing samples of Ramalinga Raju
and four others within next two days in the court itself.

Allowing the plea of the CBI, the judge said in his
order that obtaining signatures of the accused would be use
for both prosecution and accused, who have been denying
forging of any documents.

The judge held that the signatures taken earlier by the
investigating agencies during their custodial interrogation
was not valid.

The CBI had roped in experts, including those from the
Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and
Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India (ICWAI) to
probe the case.

On January 7, Ramalinga Raju revealing a multi-crore
accounting fraud in the company confessed to cooking accounts
and inflating profits for many years. Three days later, he
was arrested by Andhra Pradesh Police. PTI RAO
AM