CBI moves court for lie detector test on Rajus

Hyderabad: The CBI on Tuesday approached the special court in Hyderabad for conducting a lie detector and other scientific tests on Satyam's former chairman B Ramalinga Raju and two others.

In its plea before the XIV Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate here, the CBI said it wanted to conduct lie detector test on Ramalinga Raju, his brother and company's former Managing Director Rama Raju and ex-CFO Vadlamani Srinivas.

As a step-in-aid in investigation purpose and further to ascertain the facts, the CBI also wanted to conduct brain mapping test of the trio at Andhra Pradesh Forensic Science Laboratory here.

The court posted the matter to Saturday after the defence counsels sought three days’ time.

In a related development of the same case, the court deferred its order on bail plea of Raju brothers to March 28.

The designated CBI court also reserved the orders on granting permission again to the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) which had earlier in February recorded the statements of Raju, his brother Rama Raju, company's former CFO V Srinivas, and the two sacked auditors of PwC.

Opposing the bail plea by the Rajus, CBI counsel B

Ravaindranath said the investigation was at a crucial stage and bail to the accused could hamper the on-going probe. "If the accused were granted bail, they would tamper the evidence and influence the witnesses," he informed the court.

Defence lawyer Padmanabh Reddi and others contended that the investigation part is almost completed and there was no necessity to keep the accused in the custody further.

They informed the court that the documents seized by different probe agencies like SFIO were in their custody and there was nothing further to seize.

The SFIO filed a petition on March 17 seeking six days time to record again the statements of Raju brothers, V Srinivas and the two sacked auditors of PricewaterHouse.

ICAI in its petition sought the permission of the court to examine and record the statements of the CAs, including V Srinivas, to find out if any misconduct on their part while discharging their duties.

Opposing the plea, defence counsel contended that Raju brothers had been interrogated by different investigating agencies, including the CBI, which questioned them during their nine-day custody recently, they said.