Hyderabad: The bail petition of Satyam Computer's former Chairman B Ramalinga Raju will come up for hearing before the Sixth Metropolitan Magistrate court in Hyderabad on Friday.
Four senior lawyers will argue on behalf of Ramalinga Raju and two others, Raju's advocate Bharat Kumar said.
However, Kumar refused to divulge on which grounds the bail petition was filed, but said there is a strong basis to the petition.
Raju and his brother Rama Raju were arrested by the Andhra police on January 9 and were sent to judicial custody till January 23 on charges of financial fraud to the tune of Rs 7,800 crore.
They were booked under IPC sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating), 409 (criminal breach of trust), 468 (forgery) and 471 (falsification of records). All these charges are non-bailable offences.
The local court will also take up the petition filed by SEBI seeking permission to interrogate Ramalinga Raju in the same case.
SEBI had summoned Ramalinga Raju to appear before its officials with records and documents on January 9, but instead Bharat Kumar had appeared before the SEBI probe team.
Sources say that SEBI's probe is focusing more on insider trading, and fraudulent and unfair trade practices, besides non-disclosures under various regulations in the SEBI Act.
The story so far
Media speculation of Government aid has mounted as analysts questioned whether India's biggest corporate fraud had left the outsourcing firm with enough money to pay its 50,000 staff.
But Economic Affairs Secretary Ashok Chawla told reporters on Thursday that the Government was not looking at any direct support for the company or bailout "at this stage."
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Senior banker and Satyam board member Deepak Parekh said it had Rs 17 billion ($348 million) in receivables and may not need new funding if the money came in on time. But Parekh added the board would consider bank loans if necessary.
The Government, which dissolved Satyam's previous board last week, appointed three new directors on Sunday and another three late on Thursday to help steer the company out of crisis.
Company Affairs Minister Prem Chand Gupta said the first impression from the new directors about the company is that its operations are sound and that "by and large" major customers were willing to remain with the firm.
"All these are steps in the right direction but they need to get a CEO and CFO in place first to run the company's daily operations. That should be a priority," Chief Executive of Unicon Financial Gajendra Nagpal said.
Satyam's shares jumped as much as 40 per cent on Friday to 28.40 rupees after the government doubled the size of the board, but the stock has still lost over 80 per cent of its value since the massive fraud was revealed.
Many questions about the accounting scandal remain to be answered: how large is it, who benefited, and how did the perpetrators manage to conceal it for so long?
Even if Satyam escapes a near-term cash crunch, it faces a long road to recovery. The new board will have to keep clients from defecting to Satyam's rivals, fend off a growing number of lawsuits over the scandal and try to rebuild investor trust.
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