Phone-tapping: CBI files chargesheet against Mumbai ex-Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey, NSE ex-CEO Chitra Ramkrishna

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 23

The CBI has filed a chargesheet in a special court here against former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey, former NSE CEO Chitra Ramkrishna and other top executives of the bourse in connection with alleged tapping of phones of officials of the stock market, officials said today.

The CBI has alleged that National Stock Exchange (NSE) had paid Rs 4.54 crore in eight years to ISEC Services Pvt Ltd, where Pandey was a director, for carrying out illegal interception of phones at the stock market employees in the name of cyber vulnerability study, the officials said.

A CBI spokesperson said, “It was alleged that unauthorised recording and monitoring of personal call lines in NSE started in 1997 when then MD (Ravi Narain) and then DMD/MD (Ramkrishna) of NSE connected call lines of NSE employees to a digital voice recorder provided by a private company.”

In the chargesheet, the CBI has named Pandey, two former executives of the company, former top executives of NSE, including managing director Ravi Narain, deputy managing director Ramkrishna, executive vice president Ravi Varanasi, head (premises) Mahesh Haldipur, group operating officer Anand Subramanian, officer on special duty SB Thosar and manager (premises) Bhupesh Mistry.

The agency has charged them with criminal conspiracy, destruction of evidence, criminal breach of trust, provisions of the Indian Telegraph Act and Prevention of Corruption Act, the officials said.

The CBI had taken up the case on July 7, 2022, based on the inputs received during the probe of the Co-location Scam in NSE that ISEC Services were illegally tapping landline phones of NSE employees, they said.

Ramkrishna supervised the illegal activity for nearly 12 years with the help of other accused NSE executives, the agency has alleged, while adding that in 2009, the monitoring of calls was handed over to ISEC, where Pandey was a director.

“To maintain secrecy, the work order was allegedly issued to the private company in the name of ‘conducting a periodic study of cyber vulnerabilities’, a senior CBI official said quoting the chargesheet.

The company installed a high-end apparatus in 2012 in NSE’s basement, capable of recording 120 calls simultaneously. “The employees of the private company were given unauthorised access to NSE premises to listen to these calls and submit weekly reports to NSE officials-then executive vice president and then head (premises),” the official said.

The reports, in turn, were being shown to Narain and Ramkrishna regularly, he said, adding that the contract of ISEC was renewed annually during 2009-17.

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