This Article is From Apr 12, 2009

Court extends police custody of Ramalinga Raju

Hyderabad: A magistrate court on Thursday extended the police custody of Satyam's tainted founder Ramalinga Raju and its former CFO Vadlamani Srinivas by a day to allow the investigators to confront them with documents seized during raids.

The Andhra Pradesh police's Criminal Investigation Department submitted that Raju had faked employee numbers --inflating them by nearly 12,000 -- and drew benefits to the tune of Rs 20 crore a month.

In the petition seeking extension of custody of Raju and Srinivas, the CID submitted that in addition to fudging the company's books of accounts, the IT company's founder appears to have cooked employee numbers too.

The public prosecutor claimed that Raju told CID officials that there were only 40,000 employees working with the firm, whereas the documents were showing over 52,000 employees.

On the basis of the inflated employee numbers, he was drawing Rs 20 crore monthly from the bank towards staff cost, the prosecution submitted.

The 6th additional chief metropolitan magistrate granted extension of police custody of the two till 4 pm on Friday.

The court had earlier remanded Raju, his brother Rama Raju and Srinivas to police custody for four days from January 18. Rama Raju has been sent to judicial custody till Friday.
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