The CBI told a local court here on Wednesday that it was awaiting replies from courts in the US, UK, Belgium, Mauritius, British Virgin Islands and Singapore regarding the transactions of foreign bank accounts allegedly owned by the Satyam scam accused B Ramalinga Raju.
While opposing tooth and nail the petition filed by former Satyam MD Rama Raju and CFO Vadlamani Srinivas who asked the court to allow them to use laptops from their jail cells to prepare notes to defend themselves before various agencies, CBI deputy legal advisor B Ravindranath said such a facility would help the accused establish outside contacts and thus jeopardise the probe into the scam.
“We have written letter rogatories to courts in six countries to verify certain foreign bank accounts connected to this scam and record the statements of the relevant persons. If laptops with internet facility are provided to the accused at this stage, they will communicate with the key witnesses. This would be detrimental to the cause of the investigation,” he said. The accused had diverted crores of rupees of Satyam money through these foreign accounts, he alleged.
When the counsel for the petitioner told the court that the accused needed laptops only to prepare their defence statements after seeing the CDs given to them by the registrar of companies, the CBI counsel said they would be no objection if the accused were provided with typewriters. “We will provide hardcopies of the contents of the CDs to the accused. This is a scam generated through computers and if computers are provided to the accused again, they would tinker with the evidence,” Ravindranath said. K Sudhakar, the magistrate for the CBI court, reserved his orders and said that he would pronounce his judgment on November 26.
Meanwhile, the CBI also requested the court to start the process of framing charges against the accused. The counsel for the PwC auditors objected to this and wanted the process of framing charges to be delayed for some more time because the second chargesheet has not yet been filed by the court. The magistrate posted this matter too to Novemebr 26. The judicial remand of all the accused in the scam too was extended up to November 26.
TOI
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