Satyam Computer Services Ltd’s founder B Ramalinga Raju and nine others have been found guilty of criminal conspiracy and cheating on Thursday by a special court in Hyderabad in the multi- crore accounting fraud case and sentenced them to seven years rigorous imprisonment.. Raju and his brother B Rama Raju have also been fined Rs five crore each while the eight others have been fined varying amounts up to Rs 25 lakh.

This is the third conviction for Raju after he confessed to cooking the books of Satyam to the tune of Rs.7,136 crore in January 2009. Later he disowned the statement.

Around 3,000 documents were marked and 226 witnesses examined during the trial that began nearly six years ago. Beside Ramalinga Raju, the other accused are, his brother and Satyam's former managing director B Rama Raju, former chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas, former PwC auditors Subramani Gopalakrishnan and T Srinivas, Raju's another brother B Suryanarayana Raju, former employees G Ramakrishna, D Venkatpathi Raju and Ch Srisailam and Satyam's former internal chief auditor V S Prabhakar Gupta.

Raju and others were charged with offences like cheating, criminal conspiracy, forgery and breach of trust under relevant sections of IPC for inflating invoices and incomes, account falsification, faking fixed deposits, besides allegedly falsifying returns through violation of various Income Tax laws.

In February 2009, the CBI took over the investigation and filed three chargesheets. The CBI accused Raju and the others of cheating, breach of trust by way of inflating invoices and incomes in the first and third charge sheets, the second one dealt with the accused allegedly falsifying returns through violation of various IT laws. During the trial, the CBI alleged that the scam caused a loss of Rs 14,000 crore to shareholders of Satyam.

The company was sold to Tech Mahindra Ltd. in April 2009 in an auction. Tech Mahindra rebranded it as Mahindra Satyam in 2013. It is now the country’s fifth biggest IT services firm.