HC grants conditional bail to Ramalinga Raju

Byrraju Ramalinga  Raju  made  it at last.  After  repeatedly  being  denied  bail  the principal accused in the infamous multi-crore accounting scam in the Satyam Computers company, Ramalinga Raju, was granted bail by the High Court on Wednesday.

The AP High Court has rejected the petition of the Central Bureau of Investigation against granting bail for some more time and  granted  conditional bail to Ramalinga Raju.

Granting bail against a surety for Rs 20 lakhs, the Court ordered the accused to appear before the CBI whenever the investigating officers called him for interrogation.

It was a setback to  CBI who said  that it  would appeal to the Supreme Court against the High Court ruling. The CBI has argued that if Raju was let out on bail he might influence the key witnesses and tamper with evidence.

It may be mentioned here that on July 20, the High Court had granted bail to five accused including Ramalinga Raju's brother B Rama Raju and former Chief Financial Officer of Satyam Computers Vadlamani Srinivas. Except Ramalinga Raju, all the remaining nine accused in the case had been granted bail from various courts on different occasions.

Ramalinga Raju's letter of confession on January 7, 2009, brought to light the biggest corporate fraud in Indian history of more than Rs 8,000 crores. Ramalinga Raju was taken into custody on the charges of cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy and so on.