Panaji, Nov 1 (TNN): The hearing on arguments before charge is likely to commence before the district sessions court, Panaji, on November 28 against former Tehelka founder editor Tarun Tejpal, who has been accused of allegedly raping his junior colleague in Goa

On February 17, the crime branch filed a chargesheet against Tejpal. The crime branch wants to prosecute Tejpal under Section 354 (assault or criminal force to a woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 354-A (outrage modesty), 341 (wrongfully restrain), 342 (wrong confinement), 376 (rape), 376(2) (f) (person in position of trust for authority over a women committees rape on such women) and 376(2) (k) (rape of a women by a person being in position of control or dominance over the women) IPC.

While fixing a date for hearing the accused in connection with framing of a charge, sessions judge B P Deshpande also passed an order directing M Krishna, assistant government examiner, Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Hyderabad, to be present on November 18 before the court with a software to access the content of three hard drives, whose copies have to be made available to Tejpal.

Special public prosecutor Francisco Tavora moved an application before the court for summoning a CFSL technical expert to access the contents of the hard drives and of the folders concerned of the DVDs.

Tavora said that on October 28, 2014, it came to the notice of all the parties concerned that although the content of the hard drives was found to be in a working condition, the content could not be accessed by the court technician, including the content of one of the folders of the three DVDs, due to a technical snag.

The judge has once again directed special public prosecutor and Tejpal's lawyer Rajeev Gomes to be present in court on November 6, to check whether six compact discs (CD) given to Tejpal can be accessed. Gomes had told the court that out of six CDs submitted to them by the prosecution after filing a supplementary chargesheet in the Tejpal case in August, three CDs are blank and three cannot be accessed.