TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2017 (8) TMI 967
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.... read with Section 14(b)(ii) of the Copyright Act, 1957. The CBI took up the investigation and seized certain documents and material from the office/residential premises of the appellant after conducting search and seizure on August 3, 2007. The appellant moved, some time in January, 2008, an application seeking release of the seized property. This application was rejected by the Court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Patiala House Courts, New Delhi on March 3, 2008. The High Court of Delhi set aside this order in Criminal Misc. Case No. 1518 of 2008, which was preferred by the appellant against the order of the trial court rejecting this application. The order of the High Court is dated May 18, 2009. By this order, the High Court restored the application for release with direction to the concerned Magistrate to deal with the application afresh. Operative portion of the order reads as under : "2. The submission of learned counsel for the petitioner is that the entire business of the petitioner is affected because of the seizure of all the electronic hardware equipments although incriminating the evidence, if any, may be only on some of them. He further submits that althoug....
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....clude hard disk as well that was seized from the office of the appellant. These are Q-2, 9 and 20. Though, copies of all other are supplied to the petitioner, he is not given the aforesaid three disks. The appellant wants copies of these disks as well. His submission is that as per the report of GEQD, cloned copies of these hard disks can be prepared and, therefore, there is no problem in supplying the same to the appellant. 4. Before dealing with the aspect in detail, we may take note of the case put up by the CBI in the chargesheet submitted before the trial court after completing the investigation into the matter. 5. The prosecution case is that M/s. Unistel Systems Private Limited (hereinafter referred to as the 'company') is a company established in the year 1995 and the business of the company was to buy, sell, import-export and distribute all types of computer software and related works. The computer software manufactured by the company were all Data Recovery software related to recovery of lost data in crashed hard disks of the computer with various types of operating systems. The Data Recovery software developed by the company is under the brand name of 'Qu....
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....ital Camera, SIM Card, etc., with the help of the stolen source code of the company. During investigation, the stolen source code was recovered from his mail which was sent by the appellant. The appellant, after developing the 'Data Doctor Recovery for FAT & NTFS' out of the stolen source code of the company, put it for sale on his website and remittance was received by him from abroad, through various payment gateways, and the variant software developed by Vikas Yadav was sold through these gateways. As per the CBI, it is also found that the appellant obtained a total amount of more than Rs. 5 crores between 2004-2008 due to online sale of the software under the name 'Data Doctor Recovery for FAT & NTFS'. 7. It is on the basis of the aforesaid allegations in the chargesheet, that the cognizance is taken by the trial court of the offence under various provisions of the IPC, Information Technology Act as well as the Copyright Act. Keeping in mind the aforesaid case put up against the appellant, we now advert to the moot question, namely, whether the approach of the courts below is correct in refusing to supply the hard disk and compact disk to the appellant herein. Request w....
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...., without any delay. It includes, documents or the relevant extracts thereof which are forwarded by the police to the Magistrate with its report under Section 173(5) of the Code. Such a compliance has to be made on the first date when the accused appears or is brought before the Magistrate at the commencement of the trial inasmuch as Section 238 of the Code warrants the Magistrate to satisfy himself that provisions of Section 207 have been complied with. Proviso to Section 207 states that if documents are voluminous, instead of furnishing the accused with the copy thereof, the Magistrate can allow the accused to inspect it either personally or through pleader in the Court. 9. Learned counsel for the appellant referred to the aforesaid provisions and argued that it was his right to receive the documents in question relied upon by the prosecution, in the absence of which the appellant would not be able to put up his defence effectively. He also submitted that the complainant had filed a suit bearing CS (OS) No. 792 of 2008 against the appellant seeking to restrain him from using/selling the said/similar software or its versions. The Division Bench of the High Court declined t....
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....p;The aforesaid apprehension of the prosecution is based on the opinion of Government Examiner (Expert) who has opined that if the cloned copy of the hard disk was required, then the same could be prepared by the laboratory on supply of new hard disk of 500 GB but such cloned copy could not be write protected. Cambridge Dictionary defines "write protect" in the following manner : "to protect the data on a computer disk so that it cannot be changed or removed by a user". Likewise, Collins Dictionary defines the term "write protected" as under : "(of a computer disk) having been protected from accidental writing or erasure" In view of this opinion of the expert, it needs to be ensured that the appellant, when given the cloned copy of the hard disk, is not able to erase or change or remove the same. If that can be achieved by putting some safeguards, it would be the ideal situation inasmuch as provisions of Section 207 of the Code which ensure fair trial by giving due opportunity to the accused to defend himself shall be fulfilled and the apprehension of the prosecution would also be taken care of. 12. We find that CBI, under similar circumstances in the case of Ru....