Hyderabad, March 20 (IANS) A city court Friday sent disgraced former chairman of Satyam Computer Services B. Ramalinga Raju, his brother Rama Raju and former chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) custody for two more days in the Rs.78 billion (Rs.7,800 crore) fraud case.
Pronouncing the orders, XIV Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate S. Samuel Victor Emmanuel allowed the CBI to take custody of the three accused for two more days, starting from 10 a.m. Saturday.
The magistrate directed the federal probe agency to bring the accused before him at his residence at 4 p.m. Sunday.
The CBI sought two more days of custody of the accused, saying it wanted to interrogate them further as some fresh leads had emerged during their interrogation.
The agency earlier interrogated the Raju brothers, the former CFO and two former auditors from Pricewaterhouse S. Gopalakrishnan and Talluri Srinivas, for seven days March 10-17.
The CBI’s multi-disciplinary investigation team (MDIT) headed by the agency’s DIG V.V. Lakshmi Narayana grilled them at the state-owned Dilkusha Guest House, which is serving as the camp office of the MDIT.
This was the first time that the CBI interrogated the accused after taking up investigations into the massive fraud from the Crime Investigation Department (CID) of Andhra Pradesh police last month.
Ramalinga Raju had Jan 7 confessed that he had cooked the company’s account books and inflated profits over the past several years.
Meanwhile, the court further extended the judicial remand of all the five accused till April 2.
The magistrate extended the judicial custody by two weeks after conducting the proceedings through video conferencing.