The Judicial First Class Magistrate Court-III here has granted permission to the Special Investigation Team -- that is probing the alleged use of cellphones and accessing of Facebook accounts by the accused in the T P Chandrasekharan murder case while in jail -- to seek information regarding their accounts from the Facebook team. Kasaba Circle Inspector N Biswas filed the request before Magistrate Titty George on Monday.
The investigators sought the details of the IP addresses of the eight Facebook accounts reportedly accessed by the undertrials, the dates and the period of time they spent on Facebook.
CI Biswas will submit the court order to City Police Commissioner G Sparjan Kumar on Tuesday and will furnish applications to the Union Home Ministry and Facebook authorities after getting an official nod from the Commissioner.
Public Prosecutor T V Asharaf appeared for the investigation team. Earlier, the city police had directly approached the Facebook team, but they said that the information could only be given via Interpol or any Central investigation agency following directive of a local court.
Subsequently, the officials moved the court. Following revelations regarding the use of mobile phones by the T P Chandrasekharan case accused in the District Jail, officials recovered 10 cellphones from the jail premises apart from memory cards, four batteries and a headset.
The Kasaba police also registered a case based on the complaint by the then Jail Superintendent R Sajan. As many as 25 SIM cards were used by the accused while in jail, according to the investigators.
Circle Inspector Biswas is heading the probe under the monitoring of Commissioner Sparjan Kumar.