:

I\_[SN]{}(t) = (t-t\_0)\^[1.6]{}

$$+ C\times exp[-\{(t/D) + (t/E)^2\}]$$

Here, the first term represents the phase associated with the shock breakout while the second term represents the plateau phase. Here ‘$t$’ is the time measured in days since 2008 December 23.95 (JD = 2454823.5), the epoch when ROTSE had a non-detection of the SN with limiting magnitude 16.16 in the $R$ band. The time of shock breakout, ‘$t_0$’ along with the constants $A, B, C, D$ and $E$ are free parameters of the fit. The values of these constants depend on the nature of the progenitor and the kind of explosion. The above model is fitted to the ROTSE data using the $\chi$ minimization technique [@press92] and the fit is shown in Figure \[fig:rotse\]. We obtained a value of the shock breakout time as $t_0 = 2.13\pm0.83$ day. This value of $t_0$ is consistent with the first data point observed from ROTSE. We shall adopt $t_0$, corresponding to JD = 2454825.6 as the explosion epoch for all the phases of . It is noted that at $V$ and $R$ bands, the SN was detected by @nakano08, just 2.4 d after the shock breakout. We note, however, that depending on the 