The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a fresh case against two former National Stock Exchange (NSE) Chief Executive Officers Ravi Narain and Chitra Ramkrishna, on charges of hiring the former Mumbai police chief Sanjay Pandey's company to illegally snoop on the employees of the Exchange.
After booking Narain, Ramkrishna and Pandey on the complaint of the Union Home Ministry, the CBI is carrying out searches at 18 locations in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Gurugram, Ghaziabad, Lucknow, Chandigarh and Kota to unearth the larger conspiracy of illegal phone tapping of the NSE’s senior employees.
CBI sources alleged iSec Securities Pvt. Ltd, owned by 1986-batch IPS officer Sanjay Pandey, had been tapping the phone of the NSE functionaries from 2009 to 2017 and were giving monthly reports to the regulator top boss Narain and later to Ramakrishna.
Pandey was earlier the director of iSec Securities Pvt Ltd which he floated after resigning from the IPS in April 2000, said the CBI sources. Later, he quit the post of director of iSec Securities and, instead, appointed his mother and son as directors.. An IIT Kanpur alumni, Pandey had to rejoin the services since the government did not accept his resignation.
The period of engagement of iSec Securities to conduct the security audit is also the time when co-location facility at the NSE was rigged to benefit broker firms and others. Pandey has already been examined by the Enforcement Directorate in the NSE co-lcoation scam.
Bail applications
Meanwhile, the Delhi High Court will decide on the bail applications of Chitra Ramakrishna and former NSE GOO Anand Subramanian on Friday. The CBI has opposed the bail of both the accused on the grounds that they will influence the witnesses and the case is at the crucial stage of investigation. Earlier, the CBI had filed a chargesheet accusing the former NSE CEO Ramakrishna of abusing her official powers to hire and subsequently redesignate Anand Subramanian as the GOO and adviser to her on very high salary.