MUMBAI : The special court that hears matters related to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigations on Saturday rejected a plea for anticipatory bail by Chitra Ramkrishna, former chief executive of NSE.
Ramkrishna had sought for an anticipatory bail since she had ‘strong roots in the society’ and had to take care of a mother and a daughter, therefore there was no fear of her running away.
While rejecting the request for anticipatory bail, the court made observations against the investigative agency and markets regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).
“CBI is most lackadaisical to say the least; as no action seems to have been taken against main beneficiaries of the present co-location scam, (the names of some of whom are mentioned in the FIR of 2018 itself) and others for almost four full years, who seems to be enjoying merrily at the expense of common citizenry for the reasons best known," said Sanjeev Agarwal, special judge, CBI court.
Colocation scam refers to instances of unfair access to few brokers when they traded on NSE via its colocation services. Colocation is a practice where brokers place their servers in exchange premises to reduce latency and get faster access to market data.
CBI had registered a case against a brokerage firm, OPG Securities, unnamed NSE and Sebi officials for giving preferential access to select few brokers in 2018. This was based on the Sebi investigation which started in 2016.
On the conduct of Sebi, the court said despite having powers under section 24 of Sebi Act the regulator decided not to file any criminal proceedings.
“Even Sebi despite being the capital market watch dog has been too kind and gentle qua the accused persons in the present FIR," said the court.
The CBI court rejected Ramkrishna’s bail plea based on the agency’s inputs that she had been evasive in her replies during the course of examination.
“Ramkrishna has been examined for three days and did not give proper responses to CBI and in order to extract the actual facts, services of a senior forensic psychologist of CFSL, CBI, New Delhi was also utilized. The senior forensic psychologist CFSL, CBI, New Delhi has observed that the applicant has been evasive in her responses. She has always attributed the knowledge regarding the matters to her lower functionaries," said the court order.
According to the CBI, the key link is Muralidharan Natarajan, the CTO of NSETECH (a subsidiary of NSE), who was responsible for putting in place the colocation architecture at NSE was directly reporting to Ramkrishna.
“It cannot be said prima facie at this stage that the role of the present accused (Ramkrishna) is not under scanner, it further appears prima facie that the applicant / accused had introduced a non existing person (the so-called Yogi) to misled the investigating agency, which may also prima facie show her connivance in the matter. The very appointment of Anand Subramanian without following due process at very exorbitant salary, prima facie shows that all of them may have been acting in tandem with each other in carrying out or in furtherance of the objectives of the co-location scam," said the court in its order.
