The Delhi High Court on Friday asked the CBI to reply to a bail plea by former National Stock Exchange (NSE) chief Chitra Ramkrishna, arrested in connection with a co-location scam.
Last week, a trial court denied bail to her, noting that the scam had “shaken the financial conscious of every investor, whether retail, institutional or otherwise, which needs mending to restore the confidence of the public at large”.
The CBI on March 6 arrested Ms. Ramkrishna in a case registered in May 2018 to probe the alleged abuse of the exchange’s server architecture for granting preferential access of market data to a stock broker, ahead of others.
Ms. Ramkrishna, who worked with the exchange from the early 1990s, was its Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer from April 2013 to December 2016. During her tenure as Joint Managing Director (JMD) from 2009 till March 31, 2013, co-location was conceptualised and implemented.
‘Illegal’ appointment
The CBI said that Ms. Ramkrishna “illegally and arbitrarily” appointed co-accused Anand Subramanian in the NSE and was given disproportionate and arbitrary increase in remuneration from time to time.
The investigating agency had told the trial court that its probe regarding the allegations of preferential access granted to certain brokers by officials of the NSE through its co-location facility and undue gains made out of it, during the tenure of Ms. Ramkrishna and Mr. Subramanian, is “under way”.
On May 12, the trial court, while denying bail to Ms. Ramkrishna stated that though the charge sheet filed so far was with regard to her role in the illegal appointment of Mr. Subramanian, giving him undue benefits and also sharing of sensitive information of the NSE on fictional e-mail, the “true magnitude” of the co-location scam was still to be worked out.
The trial court had said that it could have “huge implications both national as well as international with regard to the image of the NSE, which is one of the biggest derivative stock exchange in the world”. It had remarked that Ms. Ramkrishna, prima facie, seems to have been running the affairs of the NSE akin to that of a “private club”.
The High Court has posted Ms. Ramkrishna’s bail plea for further hearing on May 31.
