The Andhra Pradesh High Court has granted conditi­onal bail to Ramalinga Raju, founder chairman of Saty­am Computer Services and the key accused in a multi-crore accounting scam.

The development comes as a setback to the Central Bureau of Investigation (C­BI), which has been probing the case. The investigating agency had argued that Ra­ju could influence the 250 witnesses and tamper with evidence in the case once out of jail. The CBI will be challenging the order in the Supreme Court.

The relief for Raju comes after close to 17 months of in­carceration and several failed attempts at getting bail, following his admission of having perpetrated one of the largest financial scams in India. Raju is the last of the 10 Satyam accused to have got out on bail. Last month, the court had gra­nted bail to five former Sat­yam executives, including Raju’s bro­ther Rama Raju and former CFO Vadlamani Srinivas. According to the conditions imposed by the court, Raju has to remain in Hyderabad until further orders. The court has also directed the magistrate court to collect two securities of Rs 20 lakh each from Raju for the bail.

The former information technology baron has been ordered to cooperate with the investigating agencies and to appear before the magistrate daily once he is discharged from the hospital. He has been undergoing treatment for Hepatitis-C at the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences .

Raju’s counsel Bharat Kumar later told mediaper­sons that his client had be­en cooperating with the investigating agencies and would continue doing so. “We still don’t know on wh­at grounds the bail was gr­anted as we haven’t rece­ived a copy of the court’s or­der yet,” he added.

Arguing Raju’s case for bail, Kumar told the court that the investigation in the case was over and hence, there wasn’t any point in tampering with evidence. Raju’s health condition remained poor with continuous monitoring was requi­red, he added, saying th­at the latest medical report had already been submitted to the special court.

Earlier, the CBI had cast aspersions on the report by NIMS and had urged the court to set up a team of doctors to look into the accused’s health condition.

CBI has charged Raju and his cohorts with having artificially inflated Satyam’s balance sheet and thus fle­ecing investors who put money in the firm’s stock.