5 Satyam accounting fraud accused get bail

Four former employees of IT major Satyam Computers Services Ltd and a former auditor of PricewaterhouseCoopers, arrested for their alleged roles in multi-crore accounting fraud involving the software firm, were on Wednesday granted bail by the Supreme Court.

"On the totality of the circumstances, we deem it appropriate to release them on bail on a personal bond of Rs 200,000 and surety of like amount," a bench of justices Dalveer Bhandari and Dipak Misra said, while granting bail.

. . .

The former Satyam employees, who were granted bail, were its former internal chief auditor V S Prabhakar Gupta besides executives G Ramakrishna, D Venkatpathi Raju and Ch Srisailam.

The fifth accused, who got the bail, is PWC's former auditor Subramani Gopalakrishnan.

The five had approached the apex court challenging the August 30 order of Andhra Pradesh high court which had rejected their bail pleas.

. . .

Of the total 10 accused in the case, Satyam's founder B Ramalinga Raju's younger brother B Suryanarayana Raju and former PWC auditor T Srinivas had already been granted bail by different courts earlier.

The prime accused, B Ramalinga Raju and his brother and Satyam's former MD B Rama Raju, have so far not approached the apex court for bail and are still lodged in Hyderabad's Chanchalguda Central Prison under judicial custody.

The 10th accused in the case is Satyam's former chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas, who too is in judicial custody.