It was a Herculean task for both the CBI sleuths and the XXI Additional Chief Metropolitan Court, dealing with never ending ‘exhibits’, a large number of witnesses and huge amount of bytes. When the sleuths raided Satyam’s corporate office after the scam broke out, it was a tough task for them to gather evidence as the computer-savvy Ramalinga Raju and his clique had used electronic means to implement their designs. It was not an easy task for the Additional Chief Metropolitan Judge BVLN Chakravarthi even as he concluded the six-year-old case on Thursday.

Designated as the special court to try the case by the Andhra Pradesh government in 2009, the XXI Additional Chief Metropolitan Court, which started functioning from February 25, 2010, spent hundreds of hours, hearing the prosecution and the lawyers representing the accused and examining the evidence. The judge examined 226 witnesses and studied 3,137 documents that were marked as material exhibits.

The cops had to deal with a number of computers and hard disks to crunch numbers to establish the crime. The charge-sheet itself was elephantine. It ran into over 10,000 pages and had to be brought to the court in trunks loaded on to a truck. It was so bulky that the apex court on an occasion asked the CBI to focus on quality rather than quantity! It had also lined up over 250 people.

For cops, it was a learning experience and the CBI had organised special training sessions for its sleuths to enable them crack the case and also prepare them for similar cases.

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