NSE co-location scam: Delhi court sends former CEO Chitra Ramkrishna to14-day custody

New Delhi, March 14

A Delhi court on Monday sent former managing director and chief executive officer of National Stock Exchange Chitra Ramkrishna to 14-day judicial custody in the co-location scam case.

Sending her to 14-day judicial custody, Special Judge Sanjeev Aggarwal ordered that Ramakrishna be physically produced before him on March 28.

On the expiry of her seven-day police custody, the CBI produced her before the court and requested that the accused be sent to judicial custody, saying she had stopped cooperating with the agency.

The Special Judge turned down her counsel’s request allowing home-cooked food, a prayer book and masks in jail, saying she was not a VIP.

“VIP prisoners want everything, then every rule should be changed. Every prisoner is the same. She’s not a VIP,” the judge said.

The CBI is probing alleged improper dissemination of information from the computer servers of the market exchanges to the stock brokers. Ravi Narain was the MD and CEO of the NSE from April 1994 till March 2013, while Chitra Ramkrishna was MD and CEO of the NSE from April 2013 to December 2016.

Ramkrishna was arrested by the CBI on March 6 for allegedly sharing confidential information relating to the NSE and was remanded in seven-day CBI custody the next day.

Earlier, the special court had dismissed her anticipatory bail plea, saying bail applications in economic offences had to be approached differently as they involved deep-rooted conspiracies causing losses of public funds.

The income tax department had raided various premises linked to Ramkrishna in Mumbai and Chennai.

The arrest was made in the case related to the co-location scam, the FIR for which was registered in May 2018, amid fresh revelations about irregularities at the country’s largest stock exchange.

In the co-location facility offered by 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.

Earlier, capital markets regulator Sebi penalised the NSE, Ramkrishna and Ravi Narayan and two other officials for lapses in recruitment at the senior level.

Sebi observed that the NSE and its top executives violated securities contract norms relating to the appointment of Anand Subramanian as group operating officer and advisor to the managing director.