A Hyderabad civil court has vacated the interim stay that had blocked Netflix from releasing its Bad Boy Billionaires episode on the Satyam scam involving Byrraju Ramalinga Raju. Following the order, Netflix has now released the long-delayed episode, while the civil suit against it remains pending.
A Hyderabad court on Tuesday removed an ad-interim injunction that had stopped Netflix from streaming an episode based on Byrraju Ramalinga Raju, the founder of Satyam Computer Services, in its investigative documentary series Bad Boy Billionaires: India.
After the court order, Netflix released the episode, which had remained unavailable for several years due to the restraint order.
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The documentary series Bad Boy Billionaires: India, released in 2020, examines the rise and fall of some of India’s most controversial businessmen, including Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Subrata Roy.
One of the episodes focuses on Byrraju Ramalinga Raju and the massive accounting fraud linked to Satyam Computer Services, which came to light in 2009.
The episode traces how Satyam grew into one of India’s largest IT services companies before its collapse. It covers the public disclosure of falsified accounts amounting to thousands of crores of rupees and the criminal, regulatory and enforcement actions that followed.
These included investigations by Indian authorities such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
Netflix had earlier been restrained from releasing the episode by the XXV Additional Chief Judge, City Civil Court, Hyderabad, through an order dated September 1, 2020. The court had granted an ad-interim injunction in a civil suit filed by Ramalinga Raju, which resulted in the episode being blocked from public viewing.
Challenging this order, Netflix approached the Telangana High Court. In 2022, the High Court directed the trial court to take a final decision on Raju’s interim application. While passing this direction, the High Court observed that the ex parte injunction had been extended repeatedly without finally deciding the application filed under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC).
The High Court strongly criticised this approach and deprecated the continued operation of the ex parte restraint without proper adjudication on merits.
Following the High Court’s directions, the Chief Judge of the City Civil Court, Hyderabad, heard the matter afresh and vacated the interim stay on the Ramalinga Raju episode. As a result, Netflix was free to release the documentary episode as part of its series.
However, the civil suit filed by Byrraju Ramalinga Raju challenging the episode has not been dismissed and is still pending before the civil court. The court will take a final decision on the merits of the case at a later stage.
Netflix was represented in the matter by a legal team from SaiKrishna & Associates. Minnow Films, the producer of the documentary series, was represented by Bharucha & Partners, with the team led by partner Kaushik Moitra.
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