CBI to reduce number of witnesses in Satyam case

HYDERABAD: THE Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is planning to reduce the number of witnesses and documents related to the Satyam scandal after the Supreme Court pulled up the investigating agency for filing a massive chargesheet with witnesses running in to several hundreds.

“We are looking at reducing the number of witnesses to around 300 and documents to 2,000. We have moved a petition under section 294 of the CrPC to get some of the documents marked. This will help reduce the number of documents and witnesses,” said VV Lakshmi Narayana, DIG, CBI. The investigating agency has mentioned 697 witnesses and 3,067 documents as evidence as per the chargesheet.

The apex court, while cancelling the bail granted to the Satyam accused, had directed the special court handling the Satyam case to complete the trial by July-end next year. It had said that if the courts have to examine so many witnesses then there would be an impression that the trial will not be completed in reasonable time.

Meanwhile, a local court, which is trying the multi-crore accounting scam on Monday examined Singu Yoganand, a witness. He was a signatory in the panchanama conducted after the AP State Crime Investigation Department, the agency which initially investigated the case before it was handed over to the CBI, seized some documents from PriceWaterHouse in February last year. The witness said the CID had seized around 1,600 documents on February 10 last year, on which he had signed. He, however, informed the court that he was not shown any search warrant by the CID to conduct searches in the premises.