NSE phone tapping case: Delhi High Court grants bail to Chitra Ramakrishna

The Delhi High Court on Thursday allowed the bail petition of Chitra Ramakrishna Former Managing Director and CEO of the National Stock Exchange NSE in a phonetapping money laundering case filed by the Enforcement Directorate EDThe Bench of Justice Jasmeet Singh on Thursday granted bail The same bench on November 15 2022 had kept the order reserved after the conclusion of the submissions of both sides Earlier the Trial court had denied the bail to Chitra RamkrishnaThe trial Court judge while taking cognizance of a prosecution complaint Chargesheet filed by the Enforcement Directorate in the case said I find the material sufficient to take cognizance Accordingly I take cognizance of the offence of Money Laundering punishable under Section 4 of PMLA against all four accused personsI have carefully gone through the contents of the complaint the statement of accused persons and witnesses recorded under Section 50 PMLA and the documents filed along with the complaints The complaint has been filed through the Assistant Director Directorate of Enforcement Ministry of Finance Government of India who is the Public Servant Therefore an examination of the complainant is not necessary Accordingly examination of the complainant is dispensed with said the Special Judge of trial courtOn September 9 2022 the ED filed a chargesheet in Delhi Rouse Avenue Court in connection with the NSE Money Laundering CaseThe chargesheet mentioned the names of Chitra Ramkrishna Ravi Narain both are former CEOs of NSE and Sanjay Pandey former Mumbai Police commissioner and a private firm as accused of allegedly tapping the phones of NSE officials and other irregularitiesIt has been alleged that illegal phone tapping of NSE employees was done between 200917 by Ms iSec service pvt ltd The telephone monitoring was carried out by NSE through iSec without taking permission from the competent authority as required under Section 5 of the Indian Telegraph Act as well as without the knowledge or consent of the employeesAccording to the ED all the incoming and outgoing calls made from landline numbers of the employees working in the Market Surveillance Department and other employees who had access to trading data were being monitored by iSec in the name of the Cyber Vulnerability StudyAlso Read Turkey earthquake NDRF begins operations in Gaziantep two bodies recoveredThe payment for this illegal act was also made by NSE to iSec The machines used for illegal monitoring interception were sold as ewaste scrap by NSE in the year 2019 During the period between payment of Rs 454 crores was approximately made by NSE to iSec for this workFormer CEO of NSE Ravi Narain was arrested by the ED in August 2022 in connection with a money laundering caseAccording to the ED Sanjay Pandey was the founding director of iSec and floated this company in 2001 and was having 50 per cent equity in the company till 2006He was also one of its two directors till May 2006 and during the initial meetings for the award of this contract in 2009 he used to visit NSE to represent iSec during these deliberations NSE was represented by Ravi Narayan MD accused Chitra Ramkrishna DMD Ravi Varanasi and Mahesh Haldipur Head Premises NSEEven after he accused Sanjay Pandey resigned from the directorship of the company he was having an advisory role in this company and remained involved in discussions with NSE on behalf of iSec at various stages and the evidence available reveals that he had also conducted meetings with officials of NSE on behalf of iSecIt is alleged that Sanjay Pandey the 1986batch Indian Police Service IPS officer who retired from service on June 30 2022 was aware of the interceptionmonitoring recording of telephone calls of NSE employees and he used to send periodic reports through some employees of iSec to Ravi Varanasi the then Head Business Operations NSE and these reports contained the details of isolated suspicious calls and the transcripts of said callsAs per ED top officials of NSE including accused Chitra Ramkrishna conspired with Ms iSec to cheat the NSE and its employees and in furtherance of this criminal conspiracy iSec was hired for illegal interception of the phone calls of NSE employeesED says Ravi Narain was occupying the highest position of Managing Director of NSE during the period 2009 to 2013 and he was having knowledge of monitoring of telephone calls of NSE employees Rather it was he who introduced the accused Sanjay Pandey of iSec Services Pvt Ltd to accused Chitra Ramkrishna He was part of the decisionmaking process at NSE wherein it was decided to engage Ms iSec Services Pvt Ltd for the said work from 01012009 and got said work done under the garb of Periodic Study of Cyber VulnerabilitiesThe Central Bureau of Investigation CBI had recently also registered an FIR in the NSE CoLocation Case over the allegations of phone tappingFollowing the orders of the Ministry of Home Affairs MHA the Central Bureau of Investigation CBI registered a case in the alleged NSE colocation scam that involved the phone tapping of NSE employeesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever