Petition against Satyam, Pyramid Saimira filed in SC

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a direction to market regulator Sebi and the Bombay Stock Exchange to cancel all share transactions in Satyam Computers and Chennai-based entertainment firm Pyramid Saimira.

It has sought cancellation of all the transactions between January 6 and 7 on the ground that innocent investors were lured by these companies on buyback declarations and fraud was played on them.

A bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, however, refused to give early date of hearing to petitioner Mohan Lal Sharma, a practising advocate.

The advocate said that on January 6, media had widely reported about Satyam adopting proposal to buyback its shares and its decision to take up the issue in the board meeting.

According to him, before the decision was taken by the board, IL&FS had sold about 246.6 lakh shares in the market at Rs 176 per share. However, the Satyam shares crashed to close at Rs 30 after Satyam Chairman B Ramalinga Raju resigned from the board and confessed to Rs 7,000 crore fraud, he added.

The petition further added that Pyramid Saimira, which was in the news recently for serious fraud allegations wherein the company, was sent a forged letter of Sebi asking its co-promoter PS Saminathan to make an open offer to minority shareholders to buy 20 per cent at Rs 250 a share.

Various investors, including Sharma, had bought the shares under the garb of forged letter.

Within one hour of disclosure, the share went down to freeze at Rs 61.15 per share, Sharma said, adding that till date no action was taken by Sebi to get all purchased shares cancelled.