Unless the likes of K P Krishnan, Ramesh Abhishek, Ashok Chawla, Ajay Shah, Thomas sisters are subjected to the truth serum, CBI is unlikely to get to the bottom of co-lo case
A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Special Court on Monday sent former Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of National Stock Exchange Chitra Ramkrishna to 7-day CBI custody in the NSE co-location scam case, saying her custodial interrogation was required for fair and proper investigations. The probe agency is expected to confront senior Finance Ministry officials (e.g. K P Krishnan, Ramesh Abhishek, Ashok Chawla, etc., now retired) during tainted for Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s tenure. Special Judge Sanjeev Aggarwal passed the order after hearing arguments from CBI and the counsel appearing for the accused.
“It appears that the custodial interrogation of the above accused would be required to find out the detailed modus operandi adopted by her in conspiracy with the other co-accused persons involved in the present case including co-accused Anand Subramanian. The present case may be of unimaginable magnitude,” the Court said. The Court further said that her custodial interrogation would also be required for confronting her with Subramanian, who is already in police custody, in order to find out the entire ramifications of the transactions in question, to dig out the voluminous digital evidence pertaining and to find out the role of other players in this case of swindling the institutional investors, foreign institutional investors, and honest retail investors.
“Therefore, police custody remand of this accused is required for fair and proper investigations, as there are more than reasonable and substantial grounds for doing so… In these peculiar facts and circumstances, in the interest of justice and for fair investigations, accused Chitra Ramkrishna is remanded to police custody till March 14, 2022. She to be produced before the Court on March 14, 2022,” the judge said.
CBI had sought 14-day custodial interrogation of Chitra Ramakrishna saying she was non-cooperative and evasive. The CBI arrested the accused on Sunday after her anticipatory bail application was dismissed by the court on Saturday[1]. In its application before the court on Monday, the CBI said that the electronic devices recovered are being analyzed and would be used for conducting a further examination of Ramakrishna. The probe agency said she was evasive and has continuously misguided the Investigation Officer and gave wrong statements.
She is required to be confronted with Anand Subramanian and other stockbrokers to understand the magnitude and scope of the criminal conspiracy and also to be confronted with digital evidence available on record, the agency told the Court. The CBI was represented by its Additional Legal Advisor V K Sharma and Senior Public Prosecutor V K Pathak, while senior Advocate Trideep Pais appeared for the accused. It further submitted that the material already collected in the case shows that Chitra Ramkrishna in conspiracy with Anand Subramanian had improperly hired him by coercing the HR department of NSE.
Thereafter, she in conspiracy with Subramanian influenced the officials of NSE to facilitate him in having access to important decision-making processes of the NSE. During the same period, M/s OPG Securities was gaining undue advantages in NSE by logging into the secondary server, it said[2]. The CBI said that during Chitra Ramkrishna’s tenure as Joint MD, NSE, the co-location was conceptualized and implemented. She was appointed as MD and CEO of NSE on April 1, 2013.
The investigation has revealed that during the period 2013-16 after accused Chitra Ramakrishna took over as MD & CEO of NSE, OPG Securities Pvt Ltd was allowed to connect to a secondary server of the COLO-TBT Dissemination server for over 300 trading days causing it undue gain, said CBI[3]. It is further submitted that OPG Securities Pvt Ltd was warned repeatedly in 2012 that accessing the secondary server is a violation of the rules/guidelines of the NSE, it said. NSE however stopped issuing such warnings to OPG Securities without any justifiable reasons during 2013 when Chitra Ramkrishna was MD & CEO of NSE.
The investigation has also revealed that Muralidharan Natarajan, the CTO of NSETECH (a subsidiary of NSE), was responsible for putting in place the co-location architecture at NSE. He was reporting to Chitra Ramakrishna, the CBI told the court. The probe agency further alleged that Chitra Ramkrishna had shared internal confidential information of NSE including its organizational structure, dividend scenario, financial results, Human Resources Policy and related issues, response to the regulator, future projects, etc. To an e-mail ID during the period 2013 to 2016.
To whom all this information was further shared, is under investigation, said CBI to the judge. The investigation has also revealed that Ramakrishna facilitated providing confidential trading data to Infotech Financial Services Pvt. Ltd and to Ajay Shah, knowing fully well that Infotech Financial Services Pvt. Ltd was providing algorithmic software to brokers in NSE and there was a conflict of interest since one of the directors of M/s Infotech Financial Services Pvt, Ltd, it said.
In the co-location facility offered by the NSE, brokers could place their servers within the stock exchange premises giving them faster access to the markets. It is alleged that some brokers in connivance with insiders abused the algorithm and the co-location facility to make windfall profits.[4]
Reference:
[1] CBI arrests former NSE CEO Chitra Ramkrishna in co-location scam case – Mar 07, 2022, PGurus Newsdesk
[2] Why NSE cannot go public and needs a suitor – Apr 08, 2019, PGurus.com
[3] Anatomy of a crime P3 – How did they loot? – Oct 02, 2017, PGurus.com
[4] C-Company: How Jignesh Shah became the No. 1 target of P. Chidambaram: A case study of Annihilation of a true ‘Made in India’ story by a nexus of Babus, Bankers and Businessmen with Politicians – Amazon.in
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