Court sends NSE former MD to 14-day judicial custody
NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Monday sent to 14-day judicial custody the former managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) of National Stock Exchange (NSE) Chitra Ramkrishna in connection with a co-location case.
Special judge Sanjeev Aggarwal ordered that Ramakrishna be physically produced before the court next on March 28.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) produced the accused before court upon the expiry of her seven-day custody and urged it to remand her to judicial custody.
The probe agency had arrested Ramkrishna on March 6, a day after her anticipatory bail application was dismissed by the court.
CBI had recently questioned Ramkrishna in the matter. The income tax department earlier raided 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. CBI is probing the alleged improper dissemination of information from the computer servers of the market exchanges to the stock brokers.
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, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) penalised NSE, Ramkrishna, Ravi Narayan, and two other officials for lapses in recruitment at the senior level. Ravi Narain was the MD and CEO of NSE from April 1994 till March 2013, while Chitra Ramkrishna was MD and CEO from April 2013 to December 2016.
Sebi said NSE and its executives violated securities contract norms about the appointment of Anand Subramanian as group operating officer and advisor to the managing director.