After a five-year legal battle, a court in Hyderabad on Tuesday (Dec. 30, 2025) vacated an ad-interim injunction that had restrained Netflix from streaming an episode of ‘Bad Boy Billionaires: India’, which had been conceptualised around Byrraju Ramalinga Raju, the founder of Satyam Computer Services, barandbench.com reported yesterday.

After the order was received, Netflix released the episode as part of its investigative docuseries ‘Bad Boy Billionaires: India’, a documentary series, which also focuses on other businessmen such as Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Subrata Roy, was released in 2020, the legal news website said. (https://www.barandbench.com/news/litigation/bad-boy-billionaires-netflix-releases-episode-on-satyam-scam-after-hyderabad-court-vacates-stay)

The court-cleared episode focuses on the rise and collapse of Satyam Computer Services and the allegations of accounting fraud against its founder and former chairman, Byrraju Ramalinga Raju, in 2009.

In its order, the Telengana High Court on being approached by the streamer and the producers of the docuseries, according to the barandbench.com report, had noted that the ex-parte injunction had been repeatedly extended without final disposal of the interim application under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 Code of Civil Procedure and directed lower court to continue operation of the ex parte restraint without adjudication on merits.

In compliance with the High Court direction, the Chief Judge of City Civil Court in Hyderabad heard the matter and lifted the stay on the Ramalinga Raju episode. However, Raju’s suit against the episode is still pending before the civil court for final decision, the barandbench report added.

Netflix was represented by a team from SaiKrishna & Associates, while Minnow Films, the producer, was represented by a team from Bharucha & Partners led by its partner Kaushik Moitra

All episodes of the series had been challenged by the  persons featured in the series, including Mallaya and Sahara founder Subroto Roy, who passed away in 2023.

Meanwhile, a Reuters report filed on October 5, 2020 stated that Netflix released three episodes of its four-part series about four Indian tycoons facing fraud allegations after a State court lifted an injunction, a lawyer for the world’s largest streaming service said on Monday.

The ‘Bad Boy Billionaires: India’ documentary series about liquor tycoon Mallya, Roy of the Sahara group, IT executive Ramalinga Raju and jeweller Nirav Modi had been set for release in September 2020. But Netflix suspended it after an order from the Araria district court in the eastern Bihar state, where the Sahara group argued it would damage Roy’s reputation.

After the court had lifted the stay on streaming of the series, Sahara, according to the Reuters report of 2020, had said in a statement that the documentary was “misleading”, adding that it was “depicted through some disgruntled people who hold personal grudges against Sahara”.

Raju, who admitted to a $1 billion accounting fraud more than a decade ago, has obtained a separate injunction from a court in south India.