A local court on Friday allowed one of the Satyam accused to use computer in the prison to enable him to prepare his defence for the trial in multi-crore financial fraud in the IT major.
The XXI additional chief metropolitan magistrate court allowed the petition of G Rama Krishna, accused No. 7 in the case, and directed the superintendent of Chanchalguda Central Prison to provide him a computer.
The judge BVLN Chakravarti said the accused would have to bear the cost of procuring and installing the computer and the same can be used only for storing, retrieving and accessing the case records.
Rama Krishna, former Satyam employee had prayed the court to allow him to procure a computer for preparing the case records and to defend himself during the trial.
The judge ordered the Chanchalguda Prison authorities to permit the petitioner to use basic desktop, low-end computer system enabling him to read, write and edit text documents, and also having an optical drive facility to read CDs and DVDs supplied by Central Bureau of Investigation in the prison premises only.
Rama Krishna was also asked to make necessary payments, including electrical charges, for installation and use of desktop.
Also, the judge said the computer has to be used at a place and time decided by the prison authorities.
According to the jail authorities, Krishna would be the first accused in the Chanchalguda Prison allowed to use computer to prepare his defence.
The court also said Rama Krishna will not have access to Internet and pen drives.
The petitioner can take print of the case brief prepared by him by making necessary payment and the computer shall be in custody of prison authorities, the judge said.
They can access the computer used by him at any time to check the same in case of suspicion on its usage, the judge ordered.
"If the petitioner violates any of the conditions or misuses the computer facility in any manner, the Prison authorities shall report the same to the court forthwith for necessary action," the judge said.
Rama Krishna, presently under judicial remand at the Chanchalguda Prison, in his petition had said that the CBI had seized several computer hard disks, central processing units and digital data during their investigation and they were produced as material objects along with the chargesheet.
"The eight CDs provided by the CBI to the accused contain voluminous documents running in over one lakh pages," Rama Krishna had said.
Earlier, CBI objected to the accused's petition stating that the application is not maintainable and allowing the computer may enable him to establish contact with outer world with the help of internet and with such access he will communicate with anyone, which would adversely affect the prosecution's case.
The Chanchalguda jail authorities had told the court that usage of computer by the accused does not deserve any consideration and sought for rejecting his petition.
They said further requests (by other accused) will come up if permission was granted in this particular case.
A court last year had dismissed the petitions filed by Satyam's former MD Rama Raju and its former chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas (accused No.2 and No.3), who too had sought permission to use laptops from the prison cells.
The duo were instead asked to request the jail authorities to provide them with typewriters along with stenographers for preparing the notes for the case.
Meanwhile, the court posted the matter to June 29, on CBI's plea for examination of former chairman of Satyam Computers B Ramalinga Raju, through video conferencing in the scam.
Raju, the prime accused in the case, is suffering from Hepatitis-C is currently undergoing treatment at NIMS hospital here and has not attended the court proceedings since September last year.
The court further extended the judicial remand of all the ten accused including Raju till June 29.
