Hyderabad: A City Civil Court in Hyderabad has vacated a long‑standing interim injunction that had blocked Netflix from streaming the Satyam Computers episode of its investigative docuseries “Bad Boy Billionaires: India”, paving the way for the episode’s global release after a five‑year legal battle.
The XXV Additional Chief Judge of the Hyderabad City Civil Court on Tuesday set aside the ad‑interim injunction originally passed on September 1, 2020, which had restrained Netflix Entertainment Services India LLP from airing the episode on Satyam founder B Ramalinga Raju.
With this order, Netflix has now released the long‑awaited fourth episode, titled “Riding the Tiger”, concluding the first season of “Bad Boy Billionaires: India”.
Background of the Satyam episode
“Bad Boy Billionaires: India” is a Netflix investigative docuseries that examines the rise and fall of high‑profile Indian businessmen, including Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, and Subrata Roy.
The fourth and final episode focuses on the Satyam Computer Services scandal, one of India’s biggest corporate frauds, which came to light in 2009 when Raju admitted to inflating Satyam’s accounts by thousands of crores of rupees.
The episode traces Satyam’s growth as a leading IT services company, the exposure of massive accounting fraud, and the subsequent criminal and regulatory actions taken by Indian authorities, including probes by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate. The scam is estimated to have caused losses of around $1.5 billion.
Legal challenge by Ramalinga Raju
In 2020, after Netflix announced the release of “Bad Boy Billionaires: India”, Ramalinga Raju filed a civil suit in the Hyderabad City Civil Court seeking to block the Satyam episode.
His counsel, senior advocate S Niranjan Reddy, argued that the documentary contained “half‑truths” and would damage Raju’s reputation and right to a fair trial, especially since his appeal against a seven‑year jail sentence in the Satyam scam case was still pending.
The trial court, then presided over by Additional Chief Judge B. Prathima, granted an ex parte interim injunction on September 1, 2020, restraining Netflix from releasing the episode.
Netflix later challenged this order before the Telangana High Court, which in 2022 directed the City Civil Court to finally decide the interim application and deprecated the continued operation of an ex parte stay without a merits hearing.
Court’s final ruling
In compliance with the High Court’s directions, the Chief Judge of the City Civil Court in Hyderabad heard detailed arguments from both sides and on Tuesday vacated the interim injunction.
The court held that it could not exercise control over the release of the documentary and that the injunction restraining Netflix from streaming the episode stood set aside.
Netflix counsel’s arguments
Netflix’s counsel, Bommineni Vivekananda of SaiKrishna & Associates, argued that the documentary was based on publicly available records and written documents, and that it did not intrude into Raju’s personal life; its sole purpose was to inform the public about the historical fraud. The court accepted this reasoning and allowed the episode to be released.
Episode now live on Netflix
Following the court’s order, Netflix released the episode “Riding the Tiger” globally on December 31, 2025, marking the conclusion of the “Bad Boy Billionaires: India” series.
The platform confirmed the release on its official social media, stating: “After the success of IT company Satyam Computer Services, Ramalinga Raju’s math didn’t seem to be adding up. Watch the fourth episode of Bad Boy Billionaires: India, out now, only on Netflix”
