TNN

New Delhi, Feb 3: The Supreme Court permitted the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Tuesday to interrogate former Satyam chairman B Ramalinga Raju and his brother, Rama Raju, in connection with the Rs 7,800 crore fraud.

Sebi's investigator, Sunil Kumar, will interrogate the two brothers at the Hyderabad jail over the next three days.

Frustrated by the perplexing refusal of a trial court in Andhra Pradesh to let the Securities and Exchange Board of India question Raju, the stock market regulator on Monday moved the Supreme Court to gain access to the alleged mastermind of the country's biggest-ever corporate fraud.

Appearing for Sebi on Monday, solicitor general G E Vahanvati told a bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice P Sathasivam that there was an urgent need to question Raju and his brother B Rama Raju, the former managing director of Satyam.

Significantly, while the plea was primarily against the trial court's refusal to let Sebi interrogate Raju, it appeared to reflect widespread apprehension that the regulator might not get the required cooperation from the Andhra Pradesh police to enable it to question the politically influential promoters of Satyam.

With Sebi repeatedly being denied access to Raju, there's a growing sense that the state government is actually seeking to protect Raju. There's even a strong theory--reported by this paper--that Raju surrendered before the police to pre-empt prosecution by US investors and regulatory agencies as well as federal Indian authorities such as Sebi.

In its petition, Sebi recalled it had promptly appointed an investigator and had issued summons to Raju to appear before it in Hyderabad on January 9, two days after he confessed to having cooked the company's books. ``Instead of appearing before the investigator, his lawyers took an adjournment until January 10 and he curiously surrendered before the police on January 9 evening, from which date the accused has not been available for inquiry by Sebi,'' it said.