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abstract: 'We present optical photometric and low-resolution spectroscopic observations of the Type II plateau supernova (SN) 2008in, which occurred in the outskirts of the nearly face-on spiral galaxy M 61. Photometric data in the X-rays, ultraviolet and near-infrared bands have been used to characterize this event. The SN field was imaged with the ROTSE-IIIb optical telescope about seven days before the explosion. This allowed us to constrain the epoch of the shock breakout to JD = 2454825.6. The duration of the plateau phase, as derived from the photometric monitoring, was $\sim$ 98 days. The spectra of  show a striking resemblance to those of the archetypal low-luminosity IIP SNe 1997D and 1999br. A comparison of ejecta kinematics of  with the hydrodynamical simulations of Type IIP SNe by @dessart10 indicates that it is a less energetic event ($\sim 5\times10^{50}$ erg). However, the light curve indicates that the production of radioactive $^{56}$Ni is significantly higher than that in the low-luminosity SNe. Adopting an interstellar absorption along the SN direction of $A_V \sim$ 0.3 mag and a distance of 13.2 Mpc, we estimated a synthesized  mass of $\sim0.015 M_{\sun}$. Employing semi-analytical formulae [@litvinova85], we derived a pre-SN radius of $\sim 126$, an explosion 